Safe Work Australia Chair, Mr Tom Phillips AM, today announced the release of the Thirteenth Edition of the Comparative Performance Monitoring (CPM) report on Australia’s work health and safety and workers’ compensation outcomes for 2009–10.
Mr Phillips said the report indicates that the rate of compensated injury fatalities is at its lowest level since the start of the National OHS Strategy 2002-2012 and it is expected that the target of a 20 percent reduction by 2012 will be achieved.
Key findings include:
- 194 compensated fatalities were recorded in Australia for 2009–10 and each year 13 out of every 1000 workers continue to be injured seriously enough to require a week or more off work
- return to work following an injury slightly improved from last year, with 75 per cent of injured workers successfully returning to work within eight to 10 months of sustaining their injury
- Australian workers’ compensation schemes expended more than $7 billion of which around half (56%) was paid direct to injured workers in compensation for their injury or illness and 22% was spent on medical and other services
- body stressing continued to be the injury/disease that accounts for the greatest proportion of claims (41%)
- work health and safety authorities undertook close to 200 000 workplace interventions and issued 63 000 notices during 2009–10, and
- employers are now paying 1.53% of payroll in workers' compensation premiums compared to 2.01% in 2005–06.
The Thirteenth Edition of the CPM report can be found here.