This sits alongside our guides to whether your commute is covered and what income replacement pays. Those answer what you get. This one answers the question that comes first and gets least attention: what you have to do, and how quickly, before any of it applies.
What the worker has to do
| Scheme | Worker's deadline |
|---|---|
| South Australia | Within 24 hours or as soon as practicable |
| NSW | As soon as possible after the injury happens |
| ACT | As soon as possible |
| Northern Territory, Comcare, Seacare | As soon as practicable |
| Tasmania | As soon as practicable, and before the worker has voluntarily left the employment |
| Victoria | 30 days after becoming aware of injury, with provision beyond that in certain circumstances |
| New Zealand | 12 months for a claim for cover |
| Queensland | No worker notification requirement |
| Western Australia | A worker is not required to serve a notice of injury on their employer |
Two things are worth pulling out. South Australia's 24 hours is the tightest clock
in the country by a wide margin, and it applies to the person who has just been
injured. And Western Australia states the opposite position in terms:
A worker is not required to serve a notice of injury on their employer
, with the
scheme adding that there is No formal notification of injury. Notification of claim
only
.
Most schemes sit in the middle with a standard of practicability rather than a number. That is more forgiving than a deadline but harder to rely on, because "as soon as practicable" is judged after the fact and by someone else.
What the employer has to do
The employer's clock is a separate obligation with different numbers, and it is generally expressed as a fixed period rather than a standard.
| Scheme | Employer's deadline |
|---|---|
| NSW | 48 hours after becoming aware that a worker has received a workplace injury |
| ACT | 48 hours of becoming aware |
| Tasmania, Northern Territory | 3 working days |
| South Australia | 5 business days |
| Queensland | 8 business days |
| Western Australia | No formal notification of injury. Notification of claim only |
The comparison worth making
Put the two tables together and one pairing stands out. In South Australia the injured worker has 24 hours and their employer has five business days. The person who has just been hurt carries the tightest obligation in the country, and the organisation with a claims process and an insurance relationship has roughly five times longer.
There are respectable reasons a scheme might do that. Early notification is what triggers provisional liability and gets treatment started, and the worker is the only one who knows the injury happened. But it is worth naming, because the notification duty is the one part of a compensation scheme that lands on someone who is, by definition, having a bad day.
Our view
Labelled as opinion, on the table quoted above. The variation here is harder to defend than the variation in benefits. Whether a scheme is generous is a policy choice a state is entitled to make. Whether an injured worker is required to say something within 24 hours, within 30 days, or not at all is not really a policy question, it is an accident of drafting history, and it produces a national picture no one would design.
The practical consequence falls on anyone who moves, or who employs across a border. A worker who learns the rule in one state and is injured in another can lose ground by following the habit they were taught. That is a poor reason to be worse off, and it is the argument for a common notification standard even if nothing else is harmonised.
What this page does not tell you
It is a description of prescribed notification periods, not advice about a claim, and missing a period does not automatically end a claim. Most schemes have provisions for late notification and for injuries that emerge over time, and this table does not set them out. Notification is also not the same act as lodging a claim, which has its own rules and timeframes in every scheme. Check your own scheme's regulator before relying on a line here. We have not read every underlying Act; the sections are as the comparison cites them.