Workers compensation in New South Wales: where you are on the schedule
This is the New South Wales workers compensation line, drawn from end to end. New South Wales has two marked points that matter more than the rest: week 130 and week 260. Each point below carries the section it comes from. Knowing where a point falls is not a decision about your claim.
- Payments run at up to 95% of pre-injury earnings for the first 13 weeks, then 80% until week 130. 1987 Act ss 36 to 37.
- Two points matter most: the continuation test at week 130, and the cutoff at week 260 unless permanent impairment is above 20%. 1987 Act ss 38 to 39.
- Medical cover runs 2 years, 5 years or without time limit after payments end, depending on the impairment band. 1987 Act s 59A.
Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW). Section numbers below are from that Act.
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
- Week 1
Payments begin at 95%
Weekly payments run at up to 95% of PIAWE (pre-injury average weekly earnings) for the first 13 weeks.
Source: 1987 Act s 36 · Checked August 2026 - Week 14
Second entitlement period
From week 14 to week 130, 80% of PIAWE, or up to 95% where the worker has returned to work 15 hours or more a week.
Source: 1987 Act s 37 · Checked August 2026 - Week 130
The continuation test
Payments continue past 130 weeks only where the insurer assesses no current work capacity likely to continue indefinitely, or where the worker applies in writing and meets return to work tests. Psychological injuries first notified on or after 1 July 2026 sit under separate rules: weekly payments end at 130 weeks unless WPI (whole person impairment) is at least 25%. Older psychological claims keep the earlier rules.
Source: 1987 Act s 38, s 39A; Sch 6 Pt 19R · Checked August 2026 - Week 260
The five year point
Weekly payments stop at an aggregate 260 weeks unless permanent impairment from the injury is assessed at more than 20%.
Source: 1987 Act s 39(1) and (2) · Checked August 2026 - After payments
Medical support tail
Medical cover runs 2 years, 5 years, or without time limit after payments end, depending on the assessed impairment band. Some items, including home modification and approved secondary surgery, are never time limited.
Source: 1987 Act s 59A · 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 NSW workers compensation payments change or stop
Other lines with checked data
- Workers compensation, Victoria
- Workers compensation, Queensland
- Workers compensation, South Australia
- Transport Accident Commission (TAC), Victoria
- Comcare (national)
- 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.
If something here has changed since it was checked, tell us and we will fix it: contact.
Enquiries open soon. When they do, the contact page is where to reach us: we'll explain which doors exist for your situation and, if you want, introduce you to a firm on our panel. You never pay us. Panel firms do.
We try twice, then we stop. There is no third call and no marketing list.