PROPOSED CHANGES TO WORKERS COMPENSATION
Long time readers will recognise that I have been a staunch supporter of the importance of injured workers having access to all necessary health care. It is also important that this use of our wonderful health care system should be funded by the various employers that sometimes offer the chance for a workplace injury to occur and not carried by our incredible public health system. That is, after all, the entire point of the workers compensation scheme.
There is a proposal being put to the NSW parliament that some of the conditions around accessing workers compensation be changed – particularly for those workers that make claims for psychosocial injury connected to workplace bullying and harassment.
Over the past decade the number of workers compensation claims connected to mental health injury has grown astronomically. This is a complicated part of the workers compensation scheme and is no doubt due to many factors playing out in our society at large, at the moment.
For the great majority of injured workers, be it a physical or mental injury, the entire workers compensation scheme is an incredibly unpleasant experience. It is in fact so unpleasant and damaging to the injured worker that it is not uncommon for the injured worker to experience a “secondary injury” which is the mental harm that trying to navigate the scheme causes.
Mental health injuries, more often than not, are realised by workers that are responsible for direct interactions with the public. Think about the work life of a nurse, or school teacher, or police officer, or retail worker, or Council Ranger, or child protection worker, or any other job that requires the worker to stand in front of the general public. And think also about your own experience in public at the moment and whether or not you feel we are more patient and harmonious than we have been in the past, or less.
In general terms, a person arrives at a mental health injury after repeated unpleasant experiences and eventually there is a straw that breaks the camel’s back. How these injured workers are treated by the workers compensation scheme will be deliberated by the NSW Parliament over the coming weeks.
CHANGES TO ABORTION LAW
The NSW parliament is also currently considering changes to the laws that allow for medical abortions in NSW.
It may interest many to note that the right of a woman to access abortions was only removed from the Crimes Act as recently as 2019. Prior to that, for many decades at least, abortion services were offered in NSW Health settings in a way that had no legal certainty. And prior to that, when abortion was actively pursued as an unlawful act, many women suffered incredible physical damage, including death, in trying to abort a pregnancy in the most unhealthy of ways.
It may also interest people to note that the great majority of abortions are sought early in the pregnancy and can be realised by way of prescription tablet.
The proposed changes being considered by Parliament seeks to provide more equitable access to a medical service that would support the choice of abortion. Currently, in NSW, some parts of the State are known as a “desert” for women’s health services, given that the nearest service might be 160kms+ away from that person’s home. In simple terms, this means that if you live in a city then you will most certainly have the access you need, but if you live in rural or remote NSW then you will not have access to match your health choices.
I support a woman’s right to choose. I will be supporting the changes proposed in the Bill, in its current form – allowing Nurse Practitioners, and Midwives to prescribe abortion services. I do of course respect each person’s right to have their own view on these matters and note that many will not agree with me. I also note that medical practitioners will continue to have the right to their own conscientious objection to providing these services. But given that history has shown us that women will seek to implement their own right to choose no matter what, even at great physical risk to themselves, then it is my view that defined medical services is a much safer pathway.