State Insurance Regulatory Authority (NSW) 

Act: State Insurance and Care Governance Act 2015 (NSW).¹

Established: 2015. SIRA took over the regulatory functions previously split between the Motor Accidents Authority and the WorkCover Authority.

Purpose: SIRA is the independent regulator for NSW's compulsory insurance and compensation schemes — principally workers compensation, CTP ("Green Slip") motor accident insurance, and home building compensation insurance.

Powers conferred under the Act

SIRA is a body corporate constituted by s 17(2) of the Act, and is a NSW Government agency for the purposes of any Act. Its functions include: overseeing the viability of the schemes it regulates; supervising claims handling and dispute processes; overseeing injury management and return-to-work outcomes; licensing insurers operating in the schemes; and monitoring access to treatment for injured people. The same Act separately constitutes Insurance and Care NSW (icare), which delivers and manages the schemes SIRA regulates — a delivery/regulator split worth keeping straight, since the two bodies are easy to conflate.

Is it a prosecuting authority?

Yes, for the workers compensation offences — and the Act says so expressly. This is the answer most often got wrong about SIRA, because its day-to-day work really is licensing, pricing oversight and scheme supervision, and that invites the inference that it does no criminal enforcement. The inference is unsafe.

Workplace Injury Management and Workers Compensation Act 1998 (NSW) s 245 deals with proceedings for offences against that Act, the Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW) and the regulations under them: they are dealt with summarily before the Local Court or the Industrial Relations Commission in Court Session, and proceedings "may be instituted by (but not only by) the Authority". Section 4(1) of the same Act defines Authority as the State Insurance Regulatory Authority. So the prosecuting power is conferred by name.

Two qualifications worth carrying into an answer. The power is not exclusive — "but not only by" leaves others able to institute proceedings — and it attaches to the workers compensation legislation rather than to the State Insurance and Care Governance Act 2015 (NSW), which constitutes SIRA but is not where its offences live. No specific leading case is cited here.

How it relates to the other NSW bodies

Where a dispute concerns a specific workers compensation or CTP claim, the relevant path is usually the scheme's own dispute-resolution process (which can end up before the Personal Injury Commission or NCAT, depending on the scheme) rather than a complaint to SIRA directly. SIRA's role is regulating the system those disputes sit within, not deciding individual claims.

Self-check

• Have I named the specific schemes SIRA regulates (workers compensation, CTP, home building compensation), rather than describing it only as "an insurance regulator"?
• Have I distinguished SIRA (the regulator) from Insurance and Care NSW (the scheme deliverer), constituted by the same Act?
• Have I avoided asserting case law this factsheet did not confirm?