Comcare: where you are on the schedule

This is the Comcare line, drawn from end to end. Comcare covers Australian Government employment and some licensed employers, and it runs nationally, so no state is needed. Its shape is different from a state scheme: there is no week where payments simply stop. Knowing where a point falls is not a decision about your claim.

Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth), called the SRC Act below. Comcare is national, so no state is needed.

Your line is drawn heavy. The lines that can run beside it are drawn lighter, and they stay labelled and clickable. Weight shows focus, not importance, and colour never carries a meaning on its own. Every marked point is repeated as text below, with its source.

Nothing on this map marks where you are. A position on a scheme timetable is a fact about the scheme. Where you sit on it is yours, and it is not something this page decides.

The marked points on this line

1. Week 1

   Payments begin at 100%

   Incapacity payments run at 100% of NWE (normal weekly earnings) less actual earnings for the first 45 weeks. The 45 weeks count in hours, cumulatively, not calendar weeks.

   Source: SRC Act s 19(2) and (2A) · Checked August 2026
2. Week 45

   The step-down table

   After 45 weeks the rate becomes a percentage of NWE set by hours worked that week: 75% where not working, stepping up to 100% at full hours. The step turns on hours worked, not on medical opinion about capacity.

   Source: SRC Act s 19(3) · Checked August 2026
3. Ongoing

   No week cutoff

   There is no fixed week where payments end while incapacity continues. Payments rest on a current medical certificate of capacity and earnings reporting, and are not automatic each fortnight.

   Source: Comcare, income support · Checked August 2026
4. Timing varies

   Permanent impairment

   A permanent impairment payment needs an assessed impairment of 10% or more under the approved Guide, 5% for hearing loss. Invalidity retirement is a separate decision made by the superannuation fund, not by Comcare.

   Source: SRC Act s 24(7) and (7A); Comcare, long term injury · Checked August 2026
5. Pension age

   Where payments end

   Incapacity payments end at Age Pension age. A person injured within 2 years of pension age, or after it, can receive up to 104 weeks of payments.

   Source: SRC Act s 23(1) and (1A) · Checked August 2026

Lines that can run beside yours

These are separate systems with their own rules. One can run at the same time as the line above.

• Income protection (IP)
• Total and permanent disability and life cover
• Superannuation and incapacity
• Centrelink
• Return to work

One line does not decide another

The test that ends one scheme is not the test a total and permanent disability (TPD) or income protection policy uses. A termination under one scheme does not decide the other. A TPD policy is assessed under its own definition, set out in the policy document, not under a scheme’s whole person impairment percentage.

None of this means you have a claim, and nothing on this page is an assessment of one. It means the end of one entitlement is not a verdict on all of them. Here is how to find out what cover you hold, free, in one phone call.

Where to go next

• Back to What happens next, where you can switch systems and states.
• When Comcare payments change, and what that does not decide

Other lines with checked data

• Workers compensation, Victoria
• Workers compensation, New South Wales
• Workers compensation, Queensland
• Workers compensation, South Australia
• Transport Accident Commission (TAC), Victoria
• Disability Support Pension (DSP), national

Check everything on this page

Every marked point above carries its own citation. These are the instruments and regulator pages behind them, all checked August 2026.

• Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth)
• Comcare, income support
• Comcare, long term injury or impairment

If something here has changed since it was checked, tell us and we will fix it: contact.

How to reach us