Bonuses to be banned for icare execs

This makes very compelling reading.?It’s from the State Insurance and Care Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, Second Reading Debate in the Legislative Assembly.

https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardResult.aspx#/docid/HANSARD-1323879322-124400

Opposition spokesperson Ms Sophie Cotsis, urges her fellow politicians support the proposed amendments that provide that members of staff of Insurance and Care NSW and the chief executive are not entitled to the payment of a performance-related bonus or incentive payment;

Cotsis cites a litany of past and continuing failures by icare as one reason for outlawing executive bonuses.?Lest we forget, she read into the record:

Icare underpaid 52,000 workers by up to $80 million in total.

It awarded its new CEO a $120,000 pay rise earlier this year, making him New South Wales' highest paid public servant.

Icare is increasing employer premiums by 6 per cent over the next two years.

Icare tried to introduce a gap fee for injured workers needing to see a doctor last year.

Icare racked up underwriting losses totalling $4.5 billion in the last three years, resulting in the loss of icare's $3.9 billion surplus.

The Treasurer at the time, now the Premier, had to rush approval of a $4 billion emergency bailout for the icare-managed workers compensation fund, which was protecting New South Wales police officers, paramedics, nurses and teachers, after it came within 23 minutes of plunging into a crisis in June last year.

Senior Treasury officials said in internal emails that icare had a direct line to the then Treasurer and they could not rein in the scandal-plagued agency.

Last year icare was caught secretly paying a labour hire firm $700,000 to hire a former United States Republican operative to work in the then Treasurer's office.

Icare was found to have awarded a $140 million IT contract in a seven-day tender, despite bidders warned the rush process would lead to ruin. The project's cost has since risen to $360 million and remains incomplete.

Icare was busted for handing $18 million without tender to the IVE group. That is the Liberal Party's printer and a major donor, led by the former president of the NSW Liberals.

Icare broke its own procurement rules to award at least $6 million of contracts to Korn Ferry, a recruitment firm closely linked to a former New South Wales Liberal Party Minister and party treasurer.

A leaked report from last year shows that the scandal-plagued agency icare overpaid dodgy doctors hundreds of millions of dollars in duplicate, fraudulent payments.

Icare handed $4 million in salary and bonuses to its eight top executives in the 2019 financial year, despite the agency losing $873 million that year, and 200 of its 1,200 staff were also paid bonuses.

Icare's former CEO had to resign due to a conflict of interest after it emerged that icare handed his wife a $770,000 contract without tender. The same CEO and another top executive took an undisclosed sponsored trip to Las Vegas paid for by a multimillion-dollar contractor to use the agency.

Icare's top executives took a total of 36 foreign trips in four years, 10 times more than taken by the State Insurance Regulatory Authority [SIRA], its regulator.

Icare faced an ICAC referral for handing an $11 million marketing contract to a company secretly owned by a top executive of the agency.

In September 2019 Treasury secretly cancelled an external investigation into probity and governance at icare after the former CEO complained.

The State Insurance Regulatory Authority made referrals about icare to the Independent Commission Against Corruption for further investigation.

Last December in a report the Auditor?General slammed icare for illegally using employers' money to bankroll its lavish spending.

In an April 2021 review, former Supreme Court Justice Robert McDougall slammed icare for failure of governance, sloppy execution and difficulties in getting injured workers access to their entitled benefits.

In a unanimous report agreed to by all parties, an upper House inquiry slammed icare's board for comprehensively failing to properly govern the insurer.

In 2019 a damning independent review found that in 46 per cent of claims handled, icare failed to follow the relevant law.

Cotsis stressed that the list was not exhaustive.

Mr John Sidoti also weighed in;

“Why would any person take a low?paying job as a claims officer at Employers Mutual Limited, GIO, Allianz or QBE only to be bullied by higher?paid bureaucrats? ?The legislation in this field is notorious for its complexity. How about we do something about that?

As long ago as 2000, the judges of our Court of Appeal complained that:?"The Act is a complex piece of legislation which has been much amended. The consequence is that the interpretation of its provisions and amendments is often attended with great difficulty."

If an eminent judge finds the legislation difficult to interpret, what chance does a hapless claims officer have?

Picking fault and finding noncompliance with the plethora of legislation and instruments made under the workers compensation legislation would have to be the easiest gig in town.

I guess it is like ripping wings off butterflies. It produces nothing but allows high?paid bureaucrats to justify claims for more power and more funding. Meanwhile, the system continues to be hopelessly fractured, with more reliance on high?paid consultants and ever?expanding regulators."

On an unrelated matter, the icare website has posted a photo of the CEO, Mr Richard Harding. ?He is portrayed as resplendent in a suit suggestive of bespoke tailoring.?I have an unusual body shape and use the services of a bespoke tailor to design and make up my suits.?Wouldn’t it be a coincidence if it is the same tailor??