News
ALA concerned about erosion of rights
27th Feb 2012
The Australian Lawyers Alliance, SA President, Tony Kerin, today commented on Treasurer Jack Snelling’s remarks at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia conference held in Adelaide on February 24, 2012.
“ALA’s experience with no fault schemes, over many years, is that they erode the rights of the injured by reducing their benefits and need greater levels of bureaucracy for their administration.” Mr Kerin said.
“Fault based schemes serve a number of purposes in addition to compensating victims as adequately as possible,” he said.
Mr Kerin said we already had a scheme that protected those who could not establish fault, which was the social welfare system; including Medicare.
“The national government is looking to establish a National Disability Insurance Scheme and a National Injury Insurance Scheme, which would appear to cover the territory suggested by the Treasurer. The detail on those schemes is also yet to unfold and again ALA would oppose any diminution of current rights in those schemes,” Mr Kerin said.
“Registration cost is a concern but there must be ways of dealing with that other than introducing a scheme, which erodes the rights of citizens to appropriate compensation when they are injured.
“It would be a travesty in reducing registration costs to require motorists to forego their current rights when they are injured.
“ALA looks forward to consultation about the issues,” he said.
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