Bradford Sue: General Debate 
Bradford Sue: General Debate 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 This afternoon during question time I asked the Minister for ACC the Hon Ruth Dyson a question about the invitation to Steve Longford from Australia to be a keynote speaker at the Accident Compensation Corporation’s forthcoming Bold Perspectives Shared Objectives conference in March next year. The Green Party raised the issue because we cannot really understand why the Accident Compensation Corporation felt inspired to feature Mr Longford given that his web profile identifies him as an FBI-trained criminal profiler with a specialisation in “deception detection” unless the underpinning aim here by the corporation is to use the gentleman’s expertise to get more people off income-related compensation more quickly through a presumption that better “deception detection” will achieve this. 
In response to my questions among other things the Minister suggested that this gentleman has been invited because of his specialisation in family violence. We have looked again at the material readily available on the web and at this stage we have not found anything in his resume that indicates anything to do with family violence. Instead Mr Longford’s contribution to the Australian conference the Minister mentioned earlier says in part: “Keynote Steve Longford one of our four forensic profilers in Australia: The detection of deception is based on criminal intelligence and incorporates body language social psychology. Do you know when someone is being deceptive? Is someone purposely hiding information from you?”. That was the focus of his speech at the conference in Australia. This is why the Accident Compensation Corporation has invited him here. 
When this is allied to the fact that Mr Longford’s company focuses on intelligence and investigation management for counter-terrorism and Government and corporate fraud and compliance I think it is pretty clear what it is that the Accident Compensation Corporation has invited him over to do. 
I realise that some MPs in this House probably think that countering claimant fraud and getting people off accident compensation as quickly as possible is one of its core purposes. The Green Party however subscribes to a somewhat different view—that the rehabilitation part of accident compensation should be primarily focused on helping and supporting people until they have genuinely recovered to the point where they can achieve real vocational independence; not on pushing people off because of dodgy computer certificates or treating people as criminals by case managers using behavioural profiling techniques such as those espoused by Mr Longford. 
Claimants report that individual rehabilitation plans often seem to be a token exercise with a speedy exit from weekly compensation entitlement through the vocational independence assessment process being the goal rather than restoring the claimant’s participation to the maximum extent practicable. That perception is reflected in the petition currently before the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee calling for a committee inquiry into Accident Compensation Corporation claims management. I hope the committee picks up that petition. 
I am afraid that the step-by-step computer course that attracted media attention yesterday is not an isolated incident. Accident compensation claimants around the country are reporting that the inclusion of similarly short and inadequate courses in individual rehabilitation plans under the guise of retraining is widespread. These courses give claimants no real skills that enhance their employment opportunities; rather they result in just a piece of paper that shows that they have completed the course so they can be entered into the vocational independence assessment process and thereby have their compensation stopped. When experiences like these are combined with the invitation to Steve Longford to next year’s conference the Green Party cannot help but feel that this is indicative of an Accident Compensation Corporation mindset that all claimants are potential malingerers and the primary focus is to exit them from entitlements as quickly as they can. 
Restoring an injured person’s participation to his or her maximum extent practicable should mean what it says. It does not mean making a token effort at vocational rehabilitation. It does not mean treating all claimants as criminals malingerers or deceitful fraudsters and profiling them so as to exit them from the scheme as soon as possible. It does not mean forcing people off accident compensation—and into the dole if they are lucky but often into nothing at all. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.