Law + guidance
How long you keep your full wage after a work injury depends on which scheme you are in
Almost every conversation about workers’ compensation fixes on one number: the percentage of your wage the scheme pays while you cannot work. It is the wrong number to fix on. Safe Work Australia’s 2025 comparison of every scheme in Australia and New Zealand sets out the detail, and the two figures that actually decide what lands in your account are how long you hold the top rate and what the weekly cap is. The first runs from 13 weeks to 52 weeks depending on the scheme. The second ranges from $2,423.60 a week to $3,919.40, and one scheme applies no weekly cap at all.
This is the same biennial report we used for journey cover: a systematic side-by-side of thirteen workers’ compensation schemes that is the only place the differences are laid out plainly. Table 5.2 covers income replacement, and it is the table with the most direct bearing on a worker’s life, because it answers the question every injured worker asks first.
The headline rates look broadly similar. Underneath them the schemes are doing quite different things.
What each scheme pays, and for how long
Income replacement for a worker with no current work capacity, as at the 2025 edition. Rates are simplified to the main pathway; most schemes carry additional rules for partial capacity, seriously injured workers and workers under industrial instruments. Dollar figures are the scheme’s own, at the dates the report states.
| Scheme | Top rate, and how long | Then | Weekly cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | 95% of pre-injury average weekly earnings, first 13 weeks | 80% from weeks 14 to 130, then payments cease at 260 weeks except for workers with high needs | $2,423.60 |
| Victoria | 95% of pre-injury average weekly earnings, first 13 weeks | 80% after 13 weeks | $2,660 (twice state average weekly earnings) |
| Queensland | 85% of normal weekly earnings, first 26 weeks, or the industrial instrument rate if greater | From 2 to 5 years, and only where impairment could exceed 15%: the greater of 75% of normal weekly earnings or 70% of Queensland ordinary time earnings | Total of $422,295 |
| Western Australia | 100% of pre-injury average earnings, first 26 weeks | 85%, with a safety-net minimum tied to the award or minimum wage | $3,163, plus a total cap of $273,220 |
| South Australia | 100% of average weekly earnings, first 52 weeks | 80% for the next 52 weeks, then entitlement ends at 2 years unless the worker is seriously injured | $3,919.40 (twice state average weekly earnings) |
| Tasmania | 100% of weekly payment, first 26 weeks | 90% from 26 to 78 weeks, then 80% beyond 78 weeks | Not stated as a weekly cap |
| Northern Territory | 100% of normal weekly earnings, first 26 weeks | The lesser of 75% of normal weekly earnings or 150% of average weekly earnings | Not stated as a weekly cap |
| ACT | 100% of average pre-incapacity earnings, first 26 weeks | 65% of pre-incapacity earnings, subject to a statutory floor | Not stated as a weekly cap |
| Comcare (federal) | 100% of normal weekly earnings, first 45 weeks | 75% if not working, rising with hours actually worked to 100% at full pre-injury hours | None |
| Seacare | 100% of normal weekly earnings, first 45 weeks | Same sliding scale as Comcare, 75% up to 100% by hours worked | Not stated as a weekly cap |
| New Zealand | 80% from week 2 | 80% of the long-term rate from week 5 | Not stated as a weekly cap |
The full-rate window is the number nobody quotes
A worker in New South Wales or Victoria holds the top rate for 13 weeks. A worker in South Australia holds it for 52 weeks. A federal public servant holds it for 45 weeks. That is the same injury, the same inability to work, and a four-fold difference in how long the wage holds before the first cut.
It matters more than the percentage does. The gap between 95% and 100% is five cents in the dollar. The gap between 13 weeks and 52 weeks is nine months of paying a mortgage at full rate or at four-fifths of it. Anyone comparing schemes on the headline rate alone is comparing the smaller of the two variables.
The caps differ by more than half
The weekly maximum is where the schemes separate most sharply. New South Wales caps weekly payments at $2,423.60. South Australia caps them at $3,919.40, which is 62% higher. Western Australia sits between them at $3,163 a week, and also applies a total cap of $273,220 across the life of the claim. Queensland runs the other way again, with no weekly maximum quoted in the table but a total of $422,295.
Comcare is the outlier: for the first 45 weeks it pays 100% of normal weekly earnings
with no maximum cap
applied. For a higher earner that is a materially different scheme
from the one operating in the same office building under state law. The caps bite hardest on
exactly the workers whose pre-injury earnings were highest, which is why two people on very
different salaries can receive the same weekly payment.
Two schemes pay you for the hours you manage
Most schemes step the rate down on a clock. Comcare and Seacare step it down on a clock and then tie it to how much you are actually working: 75% if not working at all, 80% at up to a quarter of pre-injury hours, 85% at up to half, 90% at up to three-quarters, and 100% at full hours.
That is a genuinely different design, and on the face of it a better one. A flat step-down pays the same whether a worker returns to two days a week or none, so the financial signal to attempt a partial return is weak. A scale keyed to hours makes every additional day worked pay for itself. We are not in a position to say the sliding scale produces better return-to-work outcomes, because the table sets out scheme design and not results, and the report does not link the two. But it is the one structural difference in Table 5.2 that is obviously aimed at the behaviour the whole system exists to encourage, and it is worth asking why nine other schemes do not use it.
Where the money stops
The step-downs are only half the picture. Several schemes end weekly payments outright. South Australia limits income maintenance to 2 years for a worker who is not seriously injured, with seriously injured defined as 35% whole person impairment for a physical injury or 30% for a psychological one. New South Wales ceases payments at 260 weeks, five years, except for workers with greater than 20% permanent impairment, and workers with highest needs receive a minimum weekly payment of $978.00. Queensland restricts the 2-to-5-year band to workers who can demonstrate that the injury could result in more than 15% permanent impairment.
So the honest summary of the Australian position is not a single replacement rate. It is that most schemes pay close to your wage for somewhere between three months and a year, reduce it after that, and in several jurisdictions stop entirely at two to five years unless an impairment threshold is met. The threshold, not the percentage, is what decides the long tail.
How we sourced this
Every entry in the table above is transcribed from Table 5.2, “Income replacement”, running from page 162 of Safe Work Australia’s Comparison of Workers’ Compensation Arrangements in Australia and New Zealand, 30th edition, released 30 June 2026. We read the 335-page report directly rather than any summary of it. The “Top rate” and “Then” columns are our own compression of entries that run to a page each in the original.
An extraction note. This report’s tables place three narrow columns beside a very wide one, and text extraction interleaves them, so a sentence can arrive with words from the neighbouring column spliced into it. Every dollar figure and every quoted phrase above was checked against a contiguous span of the raw text before publication, and the one direct quotation is cut short at the point the extraction breaks.
What we have not done. This is general information about scheme design, not advice about any claim. Each entry is simplified: we have taken the main pathway for a worker with no current work capacity, and most schemes carry separate and more generous or more restrictive rules for partial capacity, workers under industrial instruments, seriously injured workers and Defence personnel. Dollar figures are indexed and move, and are quoted at the dates the report gives. The report states the position as at its 2025 edition; the next edition is due around 2028. Anyone with a live claim should get advice from their scheme regulator or a lawyer.
Sources
- Safe Work Australia, Comparison of Workers’ Compensation Arrangements in Australia and New Zealand 2025 (30th edition, released 30 June 2026; PDF, 335 pages, read 4 August 2026): Table 5.2 on income replacement, from page 162, including every rate, step-down, cap and statutory threshold in the table above, and the Comcare wording quoted.
- Australian Workplace Safety, whether your commute is covered: the same report, on which schemes cover the trip to work.