Employment Relations - Essay Example

In that context, New Zealand’s Accident Compensation Act 1972, and the subsequent 1973 amendment to this Act framed the scope and ramifications of the country’s accident compensation policy. The 1972 Accident Compensation Act covered both the motor vehicle injuries and also non-work and work injuries. The 1972 Accident Compensation Scheme tended to affiliate to a salubrious array of rationales like pursuing a no-fault approach towards accident compensation and eliminating the time consuming and wasteful dependence on legal ways in the area of accident compensation, to extend multiple benefits to accident victims that included medical expenses, rehabilitation associated costs, payments related to permanent loss, earnings associated compensations, etc (Palmer, 1994).

Background Prior to the envisaging of the 1972 Accident Compensation Scheme, New Zealand had a compensation system that was akin to what existed in the rest of the world. However, the nation soon realized that the tort based compensation policies were replete with varied undesirable consequences and results. Eventually, it was the Royal Commission on Worker’s compensation that proposed sweeping changes in the accident compensation policies in 1966 (Foley, 2008). The recommendations made by the Woodhouse commission recognized varied general principles related to compensation like enhancing the administrative efficiency in the area of accident compensation, bringing in community onus and responsibility in the arena of accident compensation, making the concept of accident compensation to be broad based to include varied costs like rehabilitation, pay losses and lump sum payments and ameliorating the disadvantages and efficiencies associated with tort based accident compensation (Foley, 2008).

The essential crux of these recommendations was to associate accident compensation from Tort claims and to make way for the compensation of injuries irrespective of the related fault, including the fault of the person who gets injured. Rational Behind 1972 Accident Compensation Scheme It goes without saying that the 1972 Accident Compensation Scheme was a trend setter in the sense that it was perhaps one of the first few compensation policies in the world to take into cognizance a series of rationales associated with accident compensation and tried to do away with the flaws incumbent on the previously existing policies and systems (Malcolm & Barnett, 2007).

The 1972 Accident Compensation Scheme took into consideration the human, social and financial ramifications of the compensation related claims and made way for covering the injuries irrespective of who so ever happened to be at fault (Malcolm & Barnett, 2007). This policy to a large extent did away with the need for engaging in costly, time consuming and unsatisfactory processes aimed at seeking compensation through courts. This scheme also tried to mitigate the emotional and physical trauma associated with injuries by allowing for the prompt and timely rehabilitation and treatment of accident related injuries (Dewees, Duff & Trebilcock, 1996).

The 1972 Accident Compensation Scheme also diluted the financial losses and pain inflicted on the impacted individuals by allowing for