Workers compensation in South Australia: where you are on the schedule
This is the South Australian workers compensation line, drawn from end to end. South Australia is the one state where both the step-down and the end point for weekly payments fall inside two years. Knowing where a point falls is not a decision about your claim.
- Payments run at 100% of notional weekly earnings for the first 52 weeks, then 80% to week 104. RTW Act s 39(1).
- Weekly payments end at 104 weeks unless assessed as seriously injured: impairment of 35% or more for physical injury, 30% or more for psychiatric. RTW Act s 39(3); s 21(2).
- Medical cover ends after 12 months with no weekly payment entitlement, with exceptions including surgery approved in advance. RTW Act s 33(20) and (21).
Return to Work Act 2014 (SA). South Australia is the one state where the step-down and the end point both fall inside 2 years.
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 100%
For the first 52 weeks, 100% of notional weekly earnings where there is no current work capacity.
Source: RTW Act s 39(1)(a) · Checked August 2026 - Week 53
Step-down to 80%
From week 53 to week 104, 80% of notional weekly earnings.
Source: RTW Act s 39(1)(b) · Checked August 2026 - Week 104
Where weekly payments end
Weekly payments end at 104 weeks from when the incapacity first occurred, for workers other than seriously injured workers.
Source: RTW Act s 39(3) · Checked August 2026 - Gate
Seriously injured worker
Payments continue past 104 weeks where WPI (whole person impairment) is assessed at 35% or more for physical injury, or 30% or more for psychiatric injury. A flat 30% applies to assessments made before 2023.
Source: RTW Act s 21(2) · Checked August 2026 - After payments
Medical support tail
Medical expense cover ends once there has been no weekly payment entitlement for a continuous 12 months, with exceptions including surgery approved in advance and therapeutic appliances.
Source: RTW Act s 33(20) and (21) · 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.
- Claim pathways: where a line can lead next
Other lines with checked data
- Workers compensation, Victoria
- Workers compensation, New South Wales
- Workers compensation, Queensland
- 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.