100 Years On:

Has The Promise Been Kept?

A century ago, workers and communities fought for a simple principle: when work harms a person, they should not face the consequences alone.

The story begins in industrial towns such as Lithgow, where dangerous work helped build modern Australia and collective action helped turn shared responsibility into law.

Over time, that promise became a network of workers' compensation schemes intended to provide financial support, treatment and a path back to work.

Today, the machinery is different, but the central question remains. When work changes a life, does the system help the person recover - or can the process itself deepen the harm?

The Original Promise

Workers' compensation was created to ensure that injury at work was not treated simply as a private misfortune. Its promise was collective protection: income support when a person could not work, access to treatment and assistance to recover and return safely where possible.

That promise is still important. An injury can change much more than a person's health. It can disrupt work, income, identity, relationships and the future a family expected to have. It can fracture lives.

The system that responds therefore carries both practical power and a profound human responsibility.

What Happens After An Injury

Once an injury occurs, recovery can become a journey through several systems at once.

An injured person may suddenly need to deal with:

an employer and supervisor

an insurer or claims manager

treating doctors and other health practitioners

workplace rehabilitation providers

independent medical examiners

regulators, lawyers or tribunals

family members carrying the consequences at home

Each has a legitimate role. But for a person who is unwell, in pain or frightened about their future, navigating so many relationships can become a second burden.

Decisions about evidence, treatment, capacity, work and income may be made in different places by people who see only one part of the person's life.

Six women with red painted hands raised in a line

When Protection Becomes Control

The questions at the heart of Episode One become real at this point: Who decides what evidence is accepted? Who determines whether treatment is necessary? Who defines a person's capacity for work? How much voice does the injured worker have in the decisions that shape their recovery and financial security and their lives?

These questions do not assume that every decision is wrong or that every part of the system fails. They ask what happens when administration becomes more powerful than relationship - when the person the system was created to protect feels disbelieved, excluded or reduced to a claim number.

Protection can begin to feel like control when decisions are poorly explained, communication is fragmented or participation is treated as a procedural step rather than a genuine partnership.

What The Evidence Shows

Safe Work Australia's provisional data record 146,700 serious workers' compensation claims in 2023-24 - more than 400 a day. A serious claim involves at least one working week lost and includes injuries, diseases and conditions.

Mental health conditions accounted for 17,600 serious claims, or 12 per cent of the total. Over the ten years to 2023-24, these claims increased by 161 per cent.

Their median time lost was almost five times that of all serious claims, and median compensation paid was more than four times as high: $67,400 compared with $16,300.

These figures show the scale and duration of harm, but they do not tell us what caused an individual claim or whether a particular decision was justified. They do show why the quality of the response is so critical.

Safe Work Australia says workers' compensation stigma can discourage disclosure, prevent people from making a claim and damage recovery. Its National Return to Work Strategy points to timely support, positive workplace contact, informed worker participation and coordinated, person-centred care as important to recovery and return to work.

Skyscrapers bathed in golden sunlight with palm trees

The Stigma That Outlasts Reform

Workers’ compensation took shape when injury, mental illness and disability were understood very differently. People experiencing a workplace injury, could be labelled weak or unwilling to work, rather than recognised as needing support.

A century of reform has changed laws and processes.

But stigma can persist in language, decisions and everyday interactions. Being injured should not mean having to defend your character or losing your place among colleagues and friends.

Shattered’s storytelling approach was developed independently, bringing social history, expert insight and personal experiences together to reveal stigma’s human consequences. We later identified research commissioned by Safe Work Australia that supports this approach, recommending storytelling to promote empathy and understanding:

“Through including rich stories and other dynamic and engaging media, campaigns to reduce stigma can promote empathy and understanding among the target audience.”

The original promise was protection. Fulfilling it requires dignity, care and continued connection.

Challenging stigma is central to the series: encouraging employers, colleagues, health professionals and communities to question assumptions and consider their own response.

A century after the original promise of protection, fulfilling it requires more than administering support. It requires dignity, clear communication, meaningful participation and continued connection.

Resource: Safe work Australia Research on the causes and impact of stigma in workplaces, and approaches to creating positive workplace cultures that support return to work