EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
Issued by the authority of the
Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations
Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988
Specified Diseases
The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (SRC Act) establishes the Commonwealth workers’ compensation and rehabilitation scheme.
Section 7 of the SRC Act deals with certain matters relating to diseases. Subsection 7(1) provides that where:
(a) an employee has suffered, is suffering, or dies from a disease;
(b) the disease is of a kind specified by the Minister as disease related to employment; and
(c) the employee was engaged by the Commonwealth or a licensed corporation in the employment specified;
the employment shall be taken to have contributed to the contraction of the disease to a significant degree.
Essentially subsection 7(1) is a reverse onus of proof provision.
The diseases were originally specified in the Notice published in Gazette S365 (30 November 1988).
Following the commencement of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003 (LI Act), there is a requirement for all pre 2000 legislative instruments to be backcaptured or remade and placed on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments by 31 December 2007, or they will cease to have effect.
Since there is now a need to amend one of the items in the legislative instrument published on 30 November 1988, it has been decided to remake the original instrument. This instrument remakes the relevant part of the 1988 instrument. There is no substantive change.
Consultation was not undertaken as there is no substantive change but rather the relevant part of the 1988 instrument is being remade.
An assessment was made under the new guidelines issued by the Office of Best Practice Regulation, which indicated that a Regulation Impact Statement was not required for this declaration.
This Notice is a legislative instrument for the purposes of the LI Act and takes effect from 1 July 2007.