What Can I Claim Compensation For? The Heads of Damage Explained (2026)

Australian courts and injury schemes start from one guiding principle: compensation should put you, so far as money can, back in the position you would have been in if the injury had not happened (the principle lawyers call restitutio in integrum). It is meant to be no more and no less than your actual loss. Because that loss has many parts, the law divides it into separate categories called heads of damage, and each one is proved and calculated differently.

Almost every head of damage falls into one of two buckets. Economic loss (also called pecuniary loss) covers things with a dollar value you can point to or estimate, like lost wages, medical bills and care costs. Non-economic loss (general damages) covers the human cost that has no invoice, such as pain, suffering and the loss of being able to do the things you enjoy.

The distinction matters because the two buckets are treated very differently by the law. Non-economic loss is almost always capped at a fixed maximum and frequently sits behind an impairment threshold you must cross before you can claim a cent. Economic loss is usually uncapped in principle, but several schemes still limit the weekly income figure that can be used in the calculation.

Which heads you can claim, and the figures that apply, depend on which scheme governs your injury: a motor accident (CTP), a workplace injury (workers compensation), a public liability incident (a slip, trip or fall), or medical negligence. The rules and dollar figures differ by state and territory, so treat every number below as a guide and confirm the current figure with the official source for your scheme.

General damages, also called non-economic loss, compensate you for the personal, non-financial impact of your injury. The NSW Judicial Commission describes this as compensation for pain and suffering, loss of amenities of life, loss of expectation of life and disfigurement. In plain terms, it is the award for what the injury has taken from your quality of life, not your bank balance.

This is the hardest head to value because there is no market for pain or for lost enjoyment. Courts and schemes use structured methods to keep awards consistent. In NSW common law claims, severity is assessed as a proportion of a "most extreme case", with the award capped at an indexed maximum. In Queensland, an Injury Scale Value (ISV) between 0 and 100 is assigned under the Civil Liability Regulation and converted to a dollar figure by a statutory formula. For 2025-26 the top of the Queensland scale (an ISV of 100) equates to about $484,100.

Caps and thresholds are the defining feature of this head. For a NSW motor accident, no general damages are payable unless your permanent impairment is greater than 10%, and the 2026 maximum award is $691,000. Under Victoria's Transport Accident Commission (TAC) scheme, pain and suffering is capped at roughly $680,160 (as at March 2026). These maximums are indexed and change, so confirm the current figure.

Some general damages categories are rarer. Aggravated damages can be awarded where the defendant's conduct caused you extra distress, and exemplary (punitive) damages can be awarded to mark a court's disapproval of especially bad conduct. Many statutory injury schemes restrict or exclude these, so they tend to arise in court-based claims rather than scheme claims.

One of the most common surprises for injured people is that pain and suffering is not automatically payable. Most statutory schemes require you to reach a minimum level of permanent (whole person) impairment before any general damages are available. If your impairment sits below the threshold, you can still claim your medical costs and lost income, but you receive nothing for pain and suffering.

The thresholds differ by state and by scheme. Some examples of where the line is drawn:

• NSW motor accident (CTP): permanent impairment must be greater than 10% for non-economic loss.
• Victoria, Wrongs Act (public liability and medical negligence): a "significant injury" is needed, meaning more than 5% whole person impairment for most physical injuries, 5% or more for spinal injuries, and 10% or more for psychiatric injury.
• Victoria TAC: a lump sum impairment benefit is generally available from 11% impairment, and a common law claim usually requires 30% or more whole person impairment or a Serious Injury Certificate.
• NSW workers compensation: lump sum impairment payments and work injury damages have historically required 11% or more for physical injury and 15% or more for primary psychological injury. Major reforms passed in 2026 are set to lift the threshold for lump sums and common law damages to 25% from 1 July 2026, so check the current rule.

Some injuries are automatically treated as significant without an assessment. In Victoria these include asbestos-related conditions, loss of a foetus and loss of a breast. Because thresholds and dates change, and the assessment itself (the impairment rating) is technical and medical, this is an area where getting the right report from the right specialist genuinely affects whether you can claim this head at all.

Economic loss compensates you for income and earning capacity lost because of the injury. It has two parts. Past economic loss is the wages or earnings you have actually lost from the date of injury up to settlement or judgment. Future economic loss is a lump sum representing the income you will not be able to earn from now on because your capacity to work has been reduced.

Future economic loss is not simply your salary multiplied by the years to retirement. Courts assess your pre-injury earning capacity, how much of that capacity the injury has destroyed, and how much of that lost capacity actually translates into lost income. They then apply a discount for "vicissitudes", a conventional reduction (often around 15%) to reflect the ordinary risks of life such as illness, redundancy and periods out of the workforce that might have reduced your earnings anyway.

Several schemes cap the income figure used in the calculation, even though the head itself is not strictly capped. The NSW Civil Liability Act limits the weekly earnings rate that can be used to around three times average weekly earnings, and the Victorian Wrongs Act caps past economic loss at three times average weekly earnings as at the date damages are awarded. These caps mainly affect very high earners.

Proving this head is evidence-heavy. Payslips, tax returns, employment records and, for the self-employed, business accounts are usually needed to establish what you were earning and what you have lost. For future loss, medical evidence about your ongoing capacity and vocational evidence about what work you can realistically do are central.

You can claim the cost of treating and managing your injury, both what you have already paid and what you will reasonably need in the future. This is one of the most universally available heads across schemes because it reimburses genuine, documented expense rather than a notional loss.

Recoverable expenses commonly include:

• Medical and hospital treatment, surgery and specialist consultations.
• Rehabilitation, physiotherapy, psychology and other allied health.
• Pharmaceuticals and ongoing medication.
• Aids and appliances such as prosthetics, wheelchairs, crutches and spectacles.
• Home modifications (ramps, rails, bathroom changes) and vehicle modifications where the disability requires them.
• Travel costs to and from treatment.

The legal test is that the expense must be reasonably incurred and genuinely connected to the injury. You cannot recover treatment a court or insurer considers unnecessary or unrelated. Future treatment is estimated using medical evidence about what care you will need and how often, then brought back to a present-day lump sum.

Keep every receipt and referral. The strength of this head depends almost entirely on documentation, and gaps in records are the most common reason out-of-pocket claims get reduced.

If your injury means you need help with everyday tasks like cooking, cleaning, showering, driving or childcare, the cost of that care is a recognised head of damage. This applies whether you pay a commercial provider or a family member or friend provides the help for free.

Compensation for free care is known as gratuitous care, and it comes from the long-standing principle in Griffiths v Kerkemeyer that the value of needed care should be recoverable even when it is provided at no charge. The idea is that the wrongdoer should not get a windfall just because your family stepped in. The care is valued by reference to what it would cost to buy commercially.

Statutory thresholds often limit gratuitous care. In NSW, under section 15 of the Civil Liability Act, damages for gratuitous attendant care are generally only available where the need for care is for more than 6 hours per week or extends for longer than 6 months. It is an either/or test, so meeting one limb is enough, but the 6-month period must be a continuous stretch, not several shorter periods added together.

There can also be a separate claim where the injured person can no longer provide care or domestic services they used to provide for others, for example a parent who can no longer care for their children. The availability and limits of these claims vary by state, so confirm what your scheme allows.

Lost superannuation is its own head of damage. If your injury reduces your income, your employer's compulsory super contributions fall too, leaving you with less in retirement. Courts compensate for this, generally limited to the employer contributions required by law and assessed as the present value of the super you would otherwise have accumulated.

Where someone dies because of negligence, surviving family members may bring a dependency claim (in NSW under the Compensation to Relatives Act 1897). This compensates dependants for the loss of the financial support the deceased provided, and can include lost earnings and superannuation the family would have benefited from, as well as reasonable funeral expenses. Eligible claimants are typically defined family members such as spouses, de facto partners, children and, in some cases, parents and grandparents.

Other heads that may apply depending on the scheme and state include interest on past losses, the cost of fund management where a large lump sum must be professionally managed (for example for a person with a brain injury), and in limited court-based claims, aggravated or exemplary damages. Loss of consortium and servitium (the loss of a spouse's companionship and domestic services) survives in some jurisdictions but has been abolished or restricted in others.

Because these heads vary so much between schemes and states, the practical point is that a single injury can generate several overlapping claims (for example a workers compensation lump sum plus a common law work injury damages claim), and which heads are available depends on the path taken.

Every head of damage is worthless if you miss the deadline to claim. Across Australia the general limitation period for a personal injury claim is commonly 3 years, but the starting point and the exceptions vary. In several states the clock can run from when you knew, or ought to have known, the key facts about your injury and its cause, with an ultimate "long-stop" period (for example 12 years) as a backstop.

Scheme claims usually have much earlier notification deadlines that come well before the 3-year court limit. Motor accident and workers compensation schemes typically require you to lodge or notify a claim within weeks or months of the injury to preserve your full entitlements, and late notice can reduce or delay benefits even if you are still within the broader limitation period.

Courts can extend limitation periods in limited circumstances, but extensions are not granted lightly and you should never rely on one. If a deadline passes, a defendant can have the claim dismissed entirely, and in some cases a court can dismiss it even without the defendant raising the point.

The combined effect of differing schemes, thresholds, caps and deadlines is why two people with similar injuries in different states can end up with very different entitlements. Confirm the rules for your scheme and state at the official source, and seek advice early, ideally within months of the injury rather than years.