For the purposes of s.134AB(1) of the Accident Compensation Act 1985, there is an important distinction between compensable injury and the consequences of injury. A worker may sustain discrete compensable injuries both before and after 20 October 1999, and more than one such injury may be a legally sufficient cause of the same consequences. The fact that a condition evolved over a period spanning the critical date does not necessarily preclude the worker from establishing compensable injury on or after that date. The question of whether compensable injury was sustained on or after 20 October 1999 must be determined on all the evidence, not by reference to medical opinion alone. It is wrong in principle to necessarily equate injury with the development of symptoms.
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