The rates changed on 1 July 2026. Some of them.
Comcare publishes the statutory amounts payable under the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 across six tables. They do not share a schedule. Three move on 1 July, one moves in February and August, one carries dates of effect in late June and late December, and one has not moved since September 2019. Five dates in the year, and one line with no date at all. Any reference file that carries the numbers, whether that is a spreadsheet, a template, a prompt library or a project space an AI tool reads, inherits every one of those clocks at once and reports none of them.
This is not a theoretical exposure, and it is the same class of trap as the statutory clocks set out in SRC Act statutory timeframes. A calculation built on last year's weekly amount produces an underpayment or an overpayment on a live claim, and neither is discovered by a reviewer reading the reasoning, because the reasoning is sound and only the input is wrong.
What actually moved on 1 July 2026?
The statutory rates payable for benefits are published as effective from 1 July each year. From 1 July 2026, the amounts include $615.86 against subsection 19(7), $152.50 against subsection 19(8) and $76.18 against subsection 19(9). Comcare labels those three as incapacity amounts. In the Act they are the minimum earnings figure and the additions made to it for a prescribed person and for each prescribed child, which is a first sign that the label on a published table and the provision behind it are not the same thing.
The rest of the table is more direct. The permanent impairment ceiling under subsection 24(9) is up to $243,910.36, and each of the two non-economic loss components under subsection 27(2) is up to $45,733.22. Household services under subsection 29(1) and attendant care services under subsection 29(3) are each up to $609.74 per week, and Comcare's table notes that those two amounts do not apply to catastrophic injuries, which are dealt with under section 29A, with the definitions sitting in subsection 4(1). Funeral benefits under paragraph 18(4)(a) are up to $15,530.09.
The death benefit amounts sit in the same table but on a different footing. The lump sum for persons wholly dependent under subsection 17(3) is $686,849.56, with the same figure as the ceiling for persons partly dependent under subsection 17(4), and the dependent child weekly amount under subsection 17(5) is $188.89.
Two indices are at work. Comcare states that defined compensation benefits are indexed to the Consumer Price Index and that death compensation entitlements are indexed annually to the Wage Price Index, and the table records the factors applied: 1.034 on the Wage Price Index line and 1.036 on the Consumer Price Index line.
Check the provision references on that table before copying them into anything. Comcare heads the Wage Price Index group as amounts indexed according to section 13A. In the current compilation of the Act, section 13 is the Consumer Price Index indexation provision, section 13AA is the Wage Price Index provision and its relevant amounts are those specified in subsections 17(3), (4) and (5), and section 13A is the provision applying Chapter 2 of the Criminal Code to offences against the Act. The provision the table means is section 13AA, which is what Comcare's own release notices cite. The heading on the rates table is not. A register built by copying that heading inherits the error and looks authoritative doing it.
Normal weekly earnings indexation also runs from 1 July, at 3.5 percent for 2026 against 3.3 percent for 2025, using the movement in the Wage Price Index and referable to subsections 8(9B) and 8(9E). The annual interest rate applied to lump sum superannuation amounts under sections 21 and 21A, set by legislative instrument under subsection 21(5) and effective for twelve months from 1 July, is 4.46 percent for 2026 under F2026L00669, against 4.29 percent for 2025 under F2025L00680.
So far, a single annual event. Then it stops being one.
Which figures do not follow the 1 July cycle?
Two, and they are the ones most likely to be wrong in a file that was refreshed diligently in early July.
The maximum weekly compensation payable after the first 45 weeks of incapacity is set under subsection 19(5) at 150% of Average Weekly Ordinary Time Earnings of Full-time Adults, an amount published by the Australian Statistician. The Act measures that 45 weeks in hours, as 45 times the employee's normal weekly hours, so a register that records the boundary as a calendar date is already approximating. The evidence that fixes those hours is built once, at the front of the claim, and is covered in the normal weekly earnings evidence pack. Comcare publishes the maximum twice a year. The current figure is $3,125.55, with effect from 13 August 2026, following $3,076.65 from 26 February 2026 and $3,015.00 from 14 August 2025. Every date of effect in that table since February 2013 falls in February or August. Before that it moved quarterly, which is worth knowing if a calculation reaches back that far.
That gap is not hypothetical. A register rebuilt with care on 1 July 2026 carried the February amount correctly on the day it was built and was carrying a superseded maximum six weeks later, with nothing in the file to say so. The first draft of this article, written on 11 August 2026, did the same thing. It recorded $3,076.65 as the current amount two days before $3,125.55 took effect.
Superannuation is the second. The government portion of superannuation pensions paid under the Commonwealth superannuation schemes is indexed by the Consumer Price Index, and the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation reviews the employer-financed portion twice a year in line with movements in that index. The dates of effect have fallen in late June and late December in each of the last four years, and Comcare states that the adjustment is then applied to superannuation pensions in January and July. The most recent published adjustments are 2.0 percent with effect from 26 June 2026 and 2.1 percent from 26 December 2025. Comcare points to subsection 20(3) for context, which is the provision that brings a superannuation pension into the weekly compensation calculation rather than the source of the indexation itself.
The figure that has not changed since 2019
The specified rate per kilometre for travel for medical treatment by private motor vehicle is set by legislative instrument under subsection 16(6). Comcare's table records it as 68 cents per kilometre with effect from 24 September 2019, under F2019L01251. Before that, 60 cents from 1 July 2008. Before that, 47 cents from 1 October 2003.
This is the single most dangerous line for an AI-assisted workflow, for a reason that has nothing to do with the amount. Every other figure in the scheme has increased annually for years. A language model asked for the current per-kilometre rate is being asked to reproduce an exception to a pattern, which is exactly the circumstance in which a fluent, confident, wrong answer appears. It will not be wildly wrong. It will be plausibly wrong, in the direction of the trend, and it will look like every other number in the draft.
The same number in three places
There is a second, quieter trap in the published table, and it has nothing to do with dates.
Three separate lines carry the figure $152.50 from 1 July 2026: the prescribed person amount under subsection 19(8), the redemption eligibility ceiling under subsection 30(1), and the redemption eligibility ceiling under subsection 137(1).
They are three different things, and reconciling them after the fact is its own exercise, set out in the three-ledger reconciliation. Subsection 19(8) adds an amount where there are prescribed persons wholly or mainly dependent on the employee. Subsection 30(1) is a redemption Comcare must determine once weekly payments fall to the ceiling or below and the degree of incapacity is unlikely to change. Subsection 137(1) is a redemption a former employee requests in writing. All three are relevant amounts under section 13, so they index by the same factor and move together, which is why the collision is structural rather than a passing coincidence and why it needs to be documented rather than discovered.
A model retrieving from a poorly structured reference file has no reliable way to distinguish them, because the strongest signal in the text is the number itself. The observable failure is not a wrong figure. It is a right figure attached to the wrong provision, which produces a draft that cites subsection 30(1) in a passage about a prescribed person, or reasons about a redemption eligibility ceiling in a calculation that never involved one. A reviewer scanning for numerical errors will pass it.
The structural fix is to key the register on the provision rather than on the amount, and to require the model to name the provision before the figure in any output. Where two provisions genuinely share a value, note that explicitly in the register entry so the coincidence is documented rather than discovered.
The control: retrieve and cite, never recall
The safe pattern is narrow and it holds regardless of which tool the team uses.
Build an internal rate register as a controlled document. One row per amount. Each row carries the amount, the provision it is payable under, the date of effect, the legislative instrument number where the amount comes from an instrument, the source page it was taken from, and the date a named person last verified it against Comcare's published rates. Nothing else in the organisation is permitted to be the source of a statutory figure.
Then set the rule for AI use, and set it as an instruction the tool sees rather than a convention people remember. The model may retrieve a figure from the register and must quote the register entry, including the date of effect, in any draft that uses it. The model may not supply a figure from its own knowledge, may not interpolate a figure for a period between two known dates, and may not adjust a figure to reflect indexation it believes has occurred. Where the register has no entry covering the relevant period, the required output is a flag, not an estimate.
That last clause is the one that does the work. A model asked to calculate incapacity compensation for [CLAIMANT_NAME] on claim [CLAIM_NUMBER] across a period spanning 30 June will, unprompted, apply a single rate to the whole period. Periods that straddle an indexation date need to be split, and the instruction to split them belongs in the workflow rather than in the reviewer's memory.
Where the review actually happens
There is a natural instinct to review AI-drafted calculations by reading the working. That instinct is misplaced here, because the working will be internally consistent. The failure is upstream of the arithmetic.
Review the inputs against the register first, then the period boundaries, then the arithmetic. In practice this means the reviewer's first action is to check that each figure used carries a date of effect that covers the period it was applied to, and the second is to check that any period crossing 1 July, mid-February or mid-August was split.
Schedule the register review to the actual cycles rather than to the financial year. Four checkpoints cover the five dates: early July for the benefits table, normal weekly earnings, the superannuation interest instrument and the late-June superannuation pension adjustment; early January for the late-December superannuation pension adjustment; mid-February and mid-August for the two subsection 19(5) updates. Anything relying on an annual refresh will be carrying a stale maximum weekly amount for roughly half of each year.
Bottom line
The risk here is not that AI cannot do arithmetic. It is that the scheme's amounts move on five separate dates, one line has not moved since September 2019, and a reference file gives no indication which of its entries expired last week. Keep the figures in a dated, owned register, make the tool retrieve and cite rather than recall, and split any calculation that crosses an indexation date. The reasoning in an AI-drafted calculation is usually fine. The inputs are where the money is.
Do this Monday
- Locate every place a statutory figure currently lives, including prompt libraries, skill files, templates, calculators and team spreadsheets, and count them
- Stand up a single rate register with amount, provision, date of effect, instrument number where applicable, source and last-verified date
- Check the subsection 19(5) maximum in every one of those locations against the published $3,125.55 from 13 August 2026, because a file refreshed in July will still be carrying the February amount
- Check the subsection 16(6) per-kilometre rate in every one of those locations against the published 68 cents from 24 September 2019
- Add an instruction to every AI workflow that touches a calculation requiring it to cite the register entry and date of effect, and to flag rather than estimate where no entry covers the period
- Sample recent calculations covering a period that crosses 1 July and confirm the period was split and both rates applied
Content disclaimer: This article is for general educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, claims management direction, or a substitute for professional judgement under the SRC Act. Statutory amounts, indexation factors and dates of effect change and are published by Comcare; the figures quoted here were verified against Comcare's published statutory rates page on 8 September 2026 and must be verified against the current published rates before use. Determinations remain the responsibility of the delegate. All claimant details in this article are placeholders. Always refer to primary source guidance from Comcare or the relevant regulatory authority.
Primary sources
- Comcare, Statutory rates for compensation, retrieved 8 September 2026. https://www.comcare.gov.au/claims/statutory-rates
- Comcare, Release of new statutory rates under the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988, news item dated 5 June 2026. https://www.comcare.gov.au/about/news-events/news/release-of-new-statutory-rates-under-the-safety-rehabilitation-and-compensation-act-1988-0
- Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth), Compilation No. 82 (C2026C00285), in force 1 July 2026, sections 8, 13, 13AA, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 27, 29, 30 and 137. https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A03668/latest/text
- Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation (Weekly Interest on the Lump Sum) Instrument 2026, F2026L00669, commenced 1 July 2026, specifying 4.46 percent per annum for the period 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027. https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2026L00669
- Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation (Specified Rate per Kilometre) Instrument 2019, F2019L01251, registered 23 September 2019 and commenced the following day, specifying $0.68 for the purposes of subsection 16(6). https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2019L01251
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