From industrial citizen to therapeutic client: the 1987 workers’ compensation ‘reforms’ in NSW

Abstract

This paper examines parliamentary political debates associated with the introduction of the 1987 workers’ compensation ‘reforms’ in New South Wales (NSW). It shows that the ‘reforms’ were introduced by a Labor government to control and reduce the ‘burden of cost’ associated with employers’ insurance premiums; and that this was to be achieved by greater regulation of the work injury experience of individuals. This mainly involved restricting injured workers’ rights to common law action and lump-sum settlements, and obliging them to return to work. Such an outcome required the transformation of workers’ status from industrial citizens to clients of intensified therapeutic management, authorised and overseen by the state. This development was underpinned by a significant change in the political culture associated with the formulation of workers’ compensation policy. Central to it was the virtual disappearance of class-based parliamentary discourse, and its replacement by a neoliberal discursive consensus in identifying the needs of injured workers and in developing strategies to address them.

Key Words:

• Workers’ compensation
• policy discourse
• injury management
• citizenship and the state
• politics of workers’ health
• managerialism