Comparative Performance Monitoring Report released
The latest Comparative Performance Monitoring Report has been published by Safe Work Australia, providing trend analyses on work health and safety regulation and workers’ compensation schemes operating in Australia and New Zealand during 2018-19.
The report is published in three parts, focusing on:
- WHS performance, including comparing serious claim rates and work-related fatalities across states and territories
- compliance and enforcement activities
- comparing workers’ compensation premium rates, entitlements and scheme performance of jurisdictions across Australia.
Specifically, for Queensland, the number of proactive workplace visits conducted by Workplace Health and Safety Queensland in 2018-19 increased by 24 per cent to 19,845. This increase was the highest seen across all jurisdictions, with New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory decreasing significantly.
The number of proactive workshops/presentations/seminars conducted by WHSQ in 2018-19 remained steady, while the number of reactive workplace visits increased by 11 per cent.
Other highlights include:
- a sharp rise in the number of notices issued (up 127 per cent)
- a dramatic rise in fines imposed by the courts for successful prosecutions, up 135 per cent
- the proportion of mental stress claims in Queensland increased from 3.4 per cent of serious claims in 2017-18 to 4.1 per cent in 2018-19, the lowest of all states in 2018-19 except for Western Australia with 3.6 per cent
- the number of self-insured serious claims decreased by eight per cent to 1,683 in 2018–19, down from 1,838 in 2013–14
- in 2017–18, 52 per cent of claims had a duration of less than six weeks of compensation, with only six per cent of claims resulting in a year or more of compensation which reflects the short-tailed lump sum nature of Queensland’s scheme.
Further information
The report and data are drawn from a range of sources, including workers’ compensation and WHS authorities, the National Data Set for Compensation-based Statistics and the Work-related Traumatic Injury Fatalities data, the National Return to Work Survey and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Read the Comparative Performance Monitoring Report 22nd Edition.