Speech by Justice Kirk at the Personal Injury Commission Memebers and Merit Reviewer Conference

Personal Injury Commission Member and Merit Reviewer Conference

Speech delivered by Justice J K Kirk

Giving Reasons in the Personal Injury Commission, Including on Appeal

Friday 14 November 2025

Next year marks the centenary of the enactment of the Workers Compensation Act 1926 (NSW), which represented a critical step in the development of workers compensation regimes in this country. It established the Workers Compensation Commission, the first specialist workers compensation tribunal in Australia.

That body and its successors, down to the current Personal Injury Commission, have produced hundreds of thousands of decisions on important issues affecting individual workers and, more recently, those injured in motor vehicle accidents. Those decisions matter to those affected by them. And, not least because they matter, the decisions should be rational, reasonable and reasoned.

The theme of my remarks today will be giving reasons for decisions made in the Personal Injury Commission. I will address two topics.
First, I will seek to summarise key principles relating to the giving of adequate reasons for decisions of the kind in question.

Second, I will discuss the nature of appellate review in appeals by way of rehearing, and thus what has to be addressed in reasons of presidential members hearing internal appeals in the Commission, in light of the Court of Appeal’s recent decision in State of New South Wales v Culhana.

View the full speech here