National employers and the Commonwealth have been disappointed
with the narrow interpretation the Administrative Appeals Tribunal
(AAT) and the courts have been giving the 2007 amendments to the
Safety Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth)
(Act). Those amendments were designed to curtail claims for work
injuries suffered as a result of performance management and
reviews, described as 'reasonable administrative action'.
In this blog we look at some 2012 cases to assess the extent to
which the amendments have increased an employer's protection
against workers' compensation claims arising from the provision
of feedback on an employee's performance.
In April 2007, significant amendments to the Act, which were
intended to extend the exclusionary provisions for work injuries
suffered as a result of 'reasonable administrative action',
commenced. Since then, a number of decisions of the AAT and the
Federal Court have clarified and, in some cases, confined
