29 March, 2024
Search
Close this search box.
LABOR DEMANDS URGENT INVESTIGATION INTO MASSIVE ICARE DATA BREACH

Date

Spread the love

NSW Labor is demanding an independent investigation into how iCare came to release the personal information of more than 190,000 injured workers.

The scandal-plagued NSW insurer has admitted to emailing more than 200 employers a spreadsheet containing the names, addresses and birthdates of 190,000 injured workers who had made a claim to iCare.

NSW Shadow Treasurer Daniel Mookhey called on the NSW Government to start an independent investigation immediately.

“The sheer size of this data breach is frightening. iCare is responsible for violating the privacy of more than a hundred-thousand injured workers,” Mr Mookhey said.

“A leak this big demands nothing less than an independent investigation.

“The 190,000 workers whose personal information iCare distributed far and wide deserve answers about why this happened.”

The data breach occurred within days of the Perrottet Government using its numbers in the NSW lower house to stop Labor from abolishing lavish bonuses for future iCare executives.

Sophie Cotsis, Shadow MInister for Industrial Relations said the latest revelation was more proof about the need for change at Dominic Perrottet’s insurer:

“Workers can’t trust iCare until it fixes and reforms its broken culture,” Ms Cotsis said.

“iCare must immediately make direct contact with every affected worker. A vague statement by iCare on its website doesn’t cut it.

“They need to know their privacy has been compromised. They might now have to take steps to protect themselves.”

iCare provides workers compensation insurance to more than 326,000 businesses and insures 3.6 million employees. The agency’s investment portfolio is worth $38 billion. The Premier created iCare in 2015. Until last year, it had only ever answered to him.

Under Dominic Perrottet’s stewardship:

  • iCare underpaid 52,000 workers up to $80 million
  • iCare underpaid 1300 dust disease victims up to $93 million.
  • iCare is increasing employer premiums by at least 40% over the next decade.
  • iCare tried to introduce a ‘gap fee’ for injured workers needing to see a doctor last year.
  • iCare awarded its new CEO a $120,000 pay rise earlier this year, making him NSW’s highest paid public servant.
  • iCare racked up underwriting losses totalling $4.54 billion in the past three years, resulting in the loss of iCare’s $3.9 billion surplus.
  • Treasurer Dominic Perrottet had to rush approval of $4 billion emergency bailout of the iCare managed workers compensation fund which was protecting NSW’s police officers, paramedics, nurses and teachers, after it came within 23 minutes of plunging into a crisis in June last year.
  • Senior Treasury officials said in internal emails that iCare had a ‘direct line’ to Treasurer Dominic Perrottet, and they could not rein in the scandal- plagued agency.
  • iCare last year was caught secretly paying a labour hire company $700,000 to hire a former US Republican Operative to work in Dominic Perotett’s ministerial office as Treasurer.
  • iCare was found to have awarded a $140 million IT contract in a seven-day tender, despite bidders warned the rushed process would lead to ruin. The project’s cost has since risen to $360 million and remais incomplete.
  • iCare was busted for handing $18 million without tender to the IVE Group, the Liberal Party’s printer and a major donor, led by a former President of the NSW Liberals.
  • iCare broke its own procurement rules to award at least $6 million of contracts to Korn Ferry, a recruitment firm closely linked to former NSW Liberal Party Minister and Party Treasurer.
  • A leaked report from last year shows that Treasurer Dominic Perrottet’s scandal-plagued agency iCare overpaid dodgy doctors hundreds of millions of dollars in duplicate and fraudulent payments.
  • iCare handed $4 million in salary and bonuses to its eight top executives in FY 2019, despite the agency losing $873 million that year. 200 of its 1200 staff were also paid bonuses.
  • iCare’s former CEO had to resign due to conflict-of-interest after it emerged that iCare handed his wife a $770,000 contract without tender.
  • The same CEO and another top executive took an undisclosed sponsored trip to Las Vegas paid for by a multi-million contractor to the agency.
  • iCare’s top executives took a total of 36 foreign trips in four years – ten times more than SIRA, their regulator.
  • iCare faced an ICAC referral for handing an $11 million marketing contract to a company secretly owned by a top executive at the agency.
  • Treasury in September 2019 secretly cancelled an external investigation into probity and governance at iCare after the former CEO complained.
  • The State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) made referrals about iCare to the Independent Commission Against Corruption for further investigation.
  • The Auditor-General slammed iCare in a report last December for illegally using employer’s money to bankroll its lavish spending.
  • Former Supreme Court Justice Robert McDougal slammed iCare for ‘failure of governance, sloppy execution and difficulties in getting injured workers access to their entitled benefits’ in an April 2021 review.
  • An Upper House Inquiry slammed iCare’s Board for ‘comprehensively failing to properly govern the insurer’ in an unanimous report agreed to by all parties.
  • A damning independent review from 2019 found that in 46 percent of claims handled, iCare failed to follow the relevant law

DANIEL MOOKHEY MLC
NSW SHADOW TREASURER

SOPHIE COTSIS MP
NSW SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS,
WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY

About the Author

More
articles