Former radio announcer Scott McBain has been denied compo for back pain after he was secretly filmed delivering sausages to his daughter.
Former radio presenter and Adelaide media identity Scott McBain has been denied worker’s compensation after a judge found a workplace injury was not to blame for ongoing back pain.
Footage secretly filmed by Integrated Waste Services, for which he drove trucks in 2016, and tendered to the SA Employment Tribunal showed McBain driving from Adelaide to Parachilna and back – and performing other exercises – when he claimed he was in serious pain.
McBain was an Adelaide radio announcer on stations including 5AA and Triple M until 2006 and has been best known in recent years for voiceovers and television advertisements.
He was in the process of unloading a truck at an IWS landfill site in Dublin in January 2016 when he fell backwards, injuring his shoulder, arm, back, hip and neck. He was granted a compensation claim for the injuries, before returning to work on light duties in March that year.
However, McBain claimed he suffered ongoing lower back pain as a result of the workplace accident and applied for a lump sum compensation payment in December 2017. McBain told the employment tribunal he suffered pain during a drive to Parachilna at Easter in March 2016, including feeling like his legs would buckle when he stepped out of the car, and took multiple breaks that he otherwise would not have.
But, without his knowledge, IWS had filmed him on the journey to and from Parachilna, as well as the day after his return. According to the judgment of Judge Margaret Kelly, the videos showed McBain loading and unloading his car, bending over, kneeling and making multiple stops without showing any visible signs of pain.
It also captured him stopping at his daughter’s home and a friend’s apartment in Stepney on the return trip to deliver meat he bought at a butcher shop in Orroroo.
Judge Kelly said McBain’s claim that he experienced a “significant increase” in back pain on the car trip was “simply not borne out in the surveillance film”.
“I am unable to reconcile that degree of complaint with Mr McBain attending at his daughter’s home to deliver meat and then to drive to an apartment complex in Stepney to deliver meat to a friend, with someone who is in constant pain after a long trip,” Judge Kelly said.
“I do not see anything urgent about the delivery of sausages that could not wait another day or be abandoned altogether in the face of that degree of pain.”
She upheld Return to Work SA’s decision to deny the compensation claim.
Source: Adelaide Now
