Compensation for illness?

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33965, 4 October 1975, Page 20

Compensation for illness?

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON. The Government has appointed a committee to investigate ways in which the Accident Compensation Scheme could be extended to cover illness. The Minister of Labour (Mr Faulkner) said that the committee would begin work immediately on ways of extending the scheme to cover incapacity from sickness. The committee would make a “thorough study of feasibility and cost of removing anomalies now existing between the compensation cover provided for the victims of accidents and those of illness,” Mr Faulkner said. The committee’s task would not primarily be to review the Accident Compensation Act, but to examine ways of providing comparable benefits for those “worst affected by incapacity due to illness.” Because of the time involved in the committee’s study, it was important that the work be started now, Mr Faulkner said. He hoped it

would complete its task within a year. The committee will be headed by an Auckland lawyer. Mr D. F. Dugdale, a member of the Auckland District Law Society’s Council, and a member of the Contracts and Commercial Law Reform Committee. The other members are Mr D. Paul (Auckland), a member of the Social Security Appeal Authority; Professor G. W. R. Palmer (Wellington), professor of law at Victoria University; Mr H. R. Fountain (Christchurch), a chartered accountant; and Mrs Ginny Talbot (South Canterbury), of the Women’s Division of Federated Farrniers.