This Act may be cited as the Workers’ Compensation Amendment Act, 1936, and shall be read together with and deemed part of the Workers’ Compensation Act, 1922 (hereinafter referred to as the principal Act).

This Act shall come into force on the first day of January, nineteen hundred and thirty-seven.

Nothing in this Act shall apply with respect to claims for compensation or other rights or liabilities in respect of accidents happening before the commencement thereof.

The definition of the term “worker” in section two of the principal Act is hereby amended by inserting therein, after the words “remunerated by wages, salary, or otherwise”, the words “and includes a share-farmer as herein defined; and also includes a person engaged in plying for hire with any vehicle the use of which is obtained from the owner thereof under any contract of bailment (other than a hire-purchase agreement) in consideration of the payment of a fixed sum or a share in the earnings or otherwise”.

In relation to a share-farmer as herein defined, every person by agreement with whom the share-farmer is entitled to receive a share of the returns or profits derived from the farming operations the subject-matter of the agreement shall, for the purposes of the principal Act, be deemed to be the employer; and in relation to any person engaged in plying for hire with any vehicle (as mentioned in the last preceding subsection), the owner of the vehicle shall for the purposes of the said Act be deemed to be the employer:

Provided that a person employed by a share-farmer in connection with his farming operations, or a person employed in connection with any vehicle as hereinbefore mentioned by any person engaged in plying for hire with such vehicle, shall not, by reason of such employment, be deemed for the purposes of the principal Act to be so employed by the employer of the share-farmer or by the employer of the person plying for hire, as the case may be.

Section two of the principal Act is hereby further amended by inserting, after the definition of the term “seaman”, the following definition:—

Section three of the principal Act is hereby amended by inserting, after paragraph (b) of subsection two, the word “or” and by adding to the subsection the following paragraph:—

The First Schedule to the principal Act is hereby consequentially amended by omitting therefrom the words “domestic service in which the employment or engagement is for a period of not less than three days”.

Section four of the principal Act, as amended by section two of the Workers’ Compensation Amendment Act, 1926, is hereby further amended by repealing paragraph (a) of subsection one, and substituting the following paragraph:—

Section two of the Workers’ Compensation Amendment Act, 1926, is hereby consequentially repealed.

Section five of the principal Act, as amended by section three of the Workers’ Compensation Amendment Act, 1926, is hereby further amended by repealing subsections five and six, and substituting the following subsections:—

Section three of the Workers’ Compensation Amendment Act, 1926, is hereby amended by repealing paragraphs (a) and (b) thereof.

For the purposes of the assessment of compensation under the principal Act, the weekly earnings of any worker shall, except as otherwise provided in this section, be deemed to be a full working-week’s earnings (exclusive of any payment for overtime) at the ordinary rate of pay for the work in which the worker was employed at the time of the accident, notwithstanding that he may not have actually worked or the employment may not have actually continued for the full week.

If any question arises under this section as to what constitutes a full working-week it shall be determined as follows:—

In the case of a contractor to whom the provisions of section sixty-three of the principal Act apply, or of any person whose remuneration is fixed by reference to the amount of work done, his weekly earnings shall be deemed to be the largest of the amounts following:—

1936, No. 6.

In the case of any person to whom the last preceding subsection does not apply who (not being a servant) is deemed to be a worker within the meaning of the principal Act, his weekly earnings shall be deemed to be the basic rate of wages fixed for adult workers under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Amendment Act, 1936, and in force at the time of the accident.

Notwithstanding anything in the foregoing provisions of this section, if in the case of any worker (not being a person to whom subsection four of this section relates) his weekly earnings, ascertained in accordance with those provisions, would be less than his average weekly earnings, his weekly earnings, instead of being ascertained as aforesaid, shall be deemed and taken to be his average weekly earnings. In this subsection the expression “average weekly earnings” means the average weekly earnings received by a worker while at work during the twelve months preceding the accident if he has been so long employed by the same employer, and, if not, then for any less period during which he has been in the employment of the same employer; but in calculating such average no account shall be taken of any periods during which the worker has been absent from work or of any sums that are paid to a worker to cover any special expenses entailed on him by the nature of the employment. Where a worker has entered into concurrent contracts of service with two or more employers under which he works at one time for one such employer and at another time for another such employer, his average weekly earnings shall be computed as if his earnings under all such contracts were earnings in the employment of the employer for whom he was working at the time of the accident.

This section is in substitution for sections six and seven of the principal Act, and those sections are hereby accordingly repealed.

Subsection one of section nine of the principal Act is hereby amended as follows:—

Except as provided in section fifty-seven of the principal Act, an employer shall not be entitled to end or diminish the weekly payments of compensation payable under the principal Act except in the following cases:—

If a registered medical practitioner certifies, after examining the worker, that he is fit for work, the worker may, and if so required by his employer shall, submit himself for examination to a committee consisting of three registered medical practitioners, who shall give a written certificate as to the worker’s fitness for work as found by them, and whose certificate shall be conclusive as to the facts certified.

For the purposes of this section the Governor-General may appoint such medical committees as he thinks fit, and may, by Order in Council, make regulations governing the conditions of their employment and their remuneration.

All claims for compensation proved in the bankruptcy of any person in accordance with the provisions of section fifty-three of the principal Act shall, in the distribution of the assets of such person, rank equally with wages of the classes specified in section one hundred and twenty of the Bankruptcy Act, 1908, as amended by section ten of the Bankruptcy Amendment Act, 1927.

The Governor-General may from time to time, by Order in Council, make regulations as follows:—