Whether your commute is covered by workers’ compensation depends on which state you are in

The document is the 30th edition of a biennial report nobody outside the sector reads: a systematic side-by-side of thirteen workers’ compensation schemes, covering eligibility, benefits, return-to-work duties, disputes and cross-border rules. It is the only place the differences are laid out plainly, and the differences are larger than most workers or employers realise.

Journey cover is the clearest example, because it is a yes-or-no question about a thing almost every worker does twice a day.

Who covers the trip to work

Journey cover as at the 2025 edition. “Journey” here means the ordinary trip between home and work, not work-related travel during the day, which is covered in every jurisdiction listed.

The part that catches people out

Two workers can stand in the same lift, in the same building, and have different answers. A Queensland state government employee injured cycling to work has a claim. A federal public servant in the same city does not, because Comcare excludes liability for a journey between an employee’s usual place of work and home, unless falling within the ordinary definition of arising out of or in the course of employment.

The same is true across a border. A worker living in Albury and injured driving to a job in Wodonga is dealing with two schemes whose answers to this question differ, which is why the report also devotes a table to cross-border provisions.

New South Wales sits in the middle and is the one most often misremembered. Journey cover was narrowed in 2012. For injuries received on or after 19 June 2012, and for workers who are not in the exempt categories, there must be a real and substantial connection between employment and the accident or incident out of which the injury arose. A commute alone does not establish that. Certain exempt workers, including police officers, paramedics and firefighters, retain the older and broader cover.

Breaks are a separate question, with a separate answer

The report treats breaks separately, and splits them into breaks taken on site and breaks taken off site. On-site breaks are covered nearly everywhere. Off-site breaks, the walk to buy lunch, are patchier: South Australia does not cover them, Tasmania does not with some exceptions, and Western Australia has no reference in the Act, with the report noting that coverage there depends on factual circumstances.

So the shape of a day matters. In several schemes you are covered from the moment you arrive until you leave, covered during a break at your desk, and not covered walking to the sandwich shop or riding home.

Why this is worth an employer’s attention too

Our view, labelled as such. None of this is an argument that the excluding schemes are wrong. Journey claims were removed in several jurisdictions precisely because the employer has no control over the risk, which is a coherent position: work health and safety duties attach to what an employer can actually influence, and the road home is not that.

The practical consequence is worth naming anyway. If you employ people across more than one state, your workers do not all have the same protection, and the ones with the least are unlikely to know it. That is a cheap thing to tell people and an expensive thing for them to discover after a crash. It also bears on how an organisation thinks about fatigue and scheduling: a late shift ending in a long drive is a real risk to a real person whether or not the resulting claim is compensable.