Most people who work for a living arrive at middle age with something already wrong. A disc that has been quietly wearing since their twenties. A shoulder repaired a decade ago. Queensland’s workers’ compensation scheme was written knowing that, and an imperfect body on the morning of the injury does not put the claim outside it.
What the legislation does instead is draw a line. It asks whether work aggravated the existing problem, and it treats the aggravation, not the pre-existing condition, as the injury. That distinction decides most of these claims: what the insurer accepts, what it pays for, and when the entitlement stops. A second half of the subject runs the other way. Before a person is hired, an employer can require them to disclose an existing problem, and a knowingly false answer carries a specific statutory consequence. Both halves sit in the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld).
What the Act actually asks
Section 32(1) defines an injury as personal injury arising out of, or in the course of, employment where the employment is a significant contributing factor to the injury. Read alone, that would be awkward for anyone whose spine was already degenerating.
Section 32(3)(b) resolves it. Injury includes an aggravation of a personal injury, a disease, or a medical condition where the condition becomes a personal injury or disease because of the aggravation, so long as the aggravation arises out of, or in the course of, employment and the employment is a significant contributing factor to the aggravation.
The practical point sits in those last three words: the test is applied to the aggravation, not to the underlying condition. Nobody has to show that work caused the wear in a disc or the arthritis in a joint. The question is narrower: was work a significant contributing factor to the worsening. The provision is on the Queensland legislation site.
Only to the extent of the effects
Section 32(4) draws a boundary around what has been accepted. It declares, to remove any doubt, that an aggravation of that kind is an injury only to the extent of the effects of the aggravation.
Two things follow. Treatment and weekly payments answer the effects of the aggravation rather than the whole underlying condition, which is why an insurer may fund physiotherapy but decline surgery aimed at long-standing degeneration. And the entitlement is not open-ended: under s 144A weekly payments stop at the first of three events, being that the incapacity caused by the work injury stops, that five years of payments have been made, or that compensation reaches the indexed maximum under part 6. So when an insurer writes that an aggravation has settled, it is making a clinical claim with a statutory consequence.
Three ways an old problem meets new work
Section 32(3)(b) has three limbs.
| Situation | Limb | What has to be shown |
| An old injury that had settled flares after heavy work | Aggravation of a personal injury | Employment was a significant contributing factor to the aggravation |
| Diagnosed osteoarthritis worsens under the demands of the job | Aggravation of a disease | The same test, applied to the worsening |
| Degeneration that had never caused symptoms until a lifting task | Aggravation of a medical condition | That the condition became an injury or disease because of the aggravation |
Psychological claims run differently. Section 32(5) takes a psychiatric or psychological disorder outside the definition of injury where it arises out of reasonable management action taken in a reasonable way, a worker’s expectation or perception of such action, or action by the Regulator or an insurer on the compensation application itself. That exclusion is covered in our guide to psychological injury WorkCover claims.
What an employer can ask before you are hired
Under s 571B(1), a prospective worker who is asked by a prospective employer must disclose their pre-existing injury or medical condition, if they have one. The obligation is real, but conditional, and the conditions are strict.
Section 571B(2) says the duty applies only if the request is made in writing and includes two things: the nature of the duties the job involves, and a statement that a knowingly false or misleading disclosure means, under s 571C, no entitlement to compensation or to seek damages for any event that aggravates the condition. A question asked across a table at interview does not engage the section. Neither does a written form that leaves out the duties, or leaves out the warning. Section 571B(3) adds a further limit: the duty does not apply where the person is engaged before having a reasonable opportunity to comply.
The subject matter is narrower than a medical history. Section 571A defines a pre-existing injury or medical condition as one existing during the employment process that a person suspects, or ought reasonably to suspect, would be aggravated by performing the duties the subject of the employment. The reference point is the job in front of them, not everything a doctor has ever written down.
What a false or misleading disclosure costs
Section 571C has three cumulative conditions. The person must have a pre-existing injury or medical condition; they must knowingly make a false or misleading disclosure under s 571B about it; and they must be employed under that employment process. Where all three are met, the worker or any other claimant is not entitled to compensation or to seek damages for any event that aggravates that condition.
Two features are easy to miss. It turns on knowledge, so an honest omission is a different case from deliberate concealment. And the disqualification is confined to events that aggravate that condition: a worker who understated an old knee problem and later suffers a crush injury to a hand is not shut out of the second claim. Section 571A supplies the test: a disclosure that would lead a prospective employer reasonably to believe the duties would not aggravate the condition.
When the aggravation settles
Because the accepted injury is the aggravation, a statutory claim naturally ends when its effects resolve. Where they do not fully resolve, the next step is an assessment of permanent impairment. Under s 179 the insurer may decide, or the worker may ask the insurer, to have the injury assessed for a degree of permanent impairment, expressed as a percentage. A doctor carries out the assessment, with a medical assessment tribunal doing it for a psychiatric or psychological injury and an audiologist for industrial deafness, and it must be made as required by the scheme directions, which is the wording s 179(3) has carried since the 2024 amendments.
The insurer must then give a notice of assessment in the approved form within 10 business days of receiving the assessment: s 185. We cover that document in our note on the notice of assessment.
What these claims turn on
Degenerative findings are common, and on their own they do not resolve the statutory question. The contest is almost always about the change: what a person could do before, what they could do after, and what happened in between.
That is why the contemporaneous record carries so much weight. The mechanism described to the first doctor. The wording on the medical certificate that must accompany the application under s 132. What was reported to a supervisor, and when.
A worker can ask to see what the insurer holds. Section 572 lets a claimant or worker request, by written notice, a copy of the documents the insurer or the Regulator is required to keep relating to the application or claim. The document holder must provide them within 20 business days unless it has a reasonable excuse.
Damages, and the dates that matter
A statutory claim and a common law claim are separate things. Section 237 limits who may seek damages at all: for a worker, the ordinary gateway is having received a notice of assessment for the injury. Where that notice records a degree of permanent impairment below 20% and offers a lump sum, s 239 requires a choice, because the worker cannot take both the lump sum for that injury and damages for it.
A damages claim also has to clear causation. Under s 305D, a decision that a breach of duty caused a particular injury has two elements: factual causation, meaning the breach was a necessary condition of the occurrence of the injury, and scope of liability. With an existing condition in the picture, factual causation is usually where the argument lives.
Three dates matter most. An application for compensation is valid only if lodged within 6 months after the entitlement arises, and lodging more than 20 business days after it arises limits the period the insurer must pay for. Section 131 provides for waiver, mandatory where a medical assessment tribunal decides that special circumstances of a medical nature exist, and discretionary for mistake, absence from the State or a reasonable cause. A decision can be reviewed by the Regulator, but the application must be made within 3 months of written notice of the decision and its reasons: s 542. And as a general rule a damages action must be brought within 3 years of the date the cause of action arose: Limitation of Actions Act 1974 (Qld) s 11. A court can extend that under s 31 of the same Act where a material fact of a decisive character was outside the claimant’s means of knowledge, but the extension has to be applied for. Pre-court steps run alongside: under s 275 a notice of claim goes to the insurer before a proceeding starts.
Published 12 August 2026.
Where this leaves you
The scheme is not built to exclude people who were already carrying something. It separates the part work is answerable for from the part it is not. Which limb of s 32(3)(b) fits, and what the record shows about the change, usually matters more than whether the underlying condition was there beforehand. It almost always was.
Related reading
- WorkCover claims in Queensland: the complete guide
- Psychological injury WorkCover claims and the management action exclusion
- How Fraser Lawyers helps with WorkCover claims
- Contact Fraser Lawyers
Need advice? Time limits and key decisions in injury claims can be strict and easy to miss. If this is your situation, contact Fraser Lawyers to understand your rights and where you stand, with no obligation. |
This article is general information only and is not legal advice. Queensland law and the figures referred to can change, and every situation turns on its own facts. Contact Fraser Lawyers for advice specific to your circumstances.
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