This page is an educational summary for professionals working with AI. It is not the law and not legal advice. Always work from the current authoritative text linked below.
What does section 37 of the SRC Act do?
Section 37 of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth), current compilation on the Federal Register of Legislation, empowers a rehabilitation authority to determine that an employee with a compensable incapacity or impairment undertake a rehabilitation program, delivered by the authority itself or an approved program provider. The determination must have regard to the eight matters listed in section 37(3), and the relevant authority pays the program's cost.
Who does it bind?
Rehabilitation authorities: Comcare for exempt authority employees, otherwise the principal officer of the employing entity, Commonwealth authority or licensee (section 4(1)). Program costs fall to the relevant authority: the licensee for its own employees, otherwise Comcare.
What do practitioners get wrong?
Treating the section 37(3) list as optional context. The provision says the authority "shall have regard to" those matters, including the section 36(8) assessment, the cost, the likely psychological effect of not providing the program, and the employee's attitude. Practitioners also assume unexcused refusal suspends everything: section 37(7A) preserves medical treatment compensation under section 16.
Where does AI use touch it?
Program design and return-to-work planning generate drafting load AI handles well. See AI, recovery at work and suitable duties and AI-drafted motivational interviewing scripts. The section 37(3) weighing itself is a human determination, informed by the section 36 assessment.
Bottom line
Section 37 is the program step of the SRC Act rehabilitation scheme: a determination bound to the mandatory section 37(3) matters, paid through section 37(5), and enforced by suspension that never reaches section 16 medical compensation.
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