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Employment Minister Eric Abetz indulged in "lurid fantasies" about a public servant who claimed workers' compensation after she was injured while having sex in a motel room, the woman's barrister says. Sydney barrister Leo Grey says the minister grossly misrepresented the facts of the case and indulged in lurid fantasies by calling the injured bureaucrat a "libidinous claimant". Senator Abetz made his comments last week while launching changes to the Comcare workers' compensation system for federal public servants, saying the case highlighted problems with the scheme. The six-year legal saga came to an end in 2014 when the High Court decided the public servant was not entitled to compensation for physical and psychological injuries she sustained when a light fitting was pulled from a wall while she had sex in a Nowra motel room in 2007. Senator Abetz revealed last week that the case, known as PVYW to protect the woman's identity, had cost taxpayers more than $600,000 in legal fees and highlighted the flaws in the system. But in an opinion piece for The Canberra Times, Mr Grey accused the minister of grossly misrepresenting the case to win support for his changes to Comcare. "I have never responded publicly up until now to the criticisms and ridicule heaped upon the case in which I represented Ms PVYW," Mr Grey said. "However, the misuse of the case by a minister of the Crown for political purposes not only offends me greatly as a lawyer, but is grossly unfair to my former client, who ran her case on the advice given to her and is not in a position to defend herself, and insulting to the six judges who thought the argument put by us was correct." The veteran barrister said Senator Abetz was wrong to focus on the sexual aspect of the case, and said the matter turned on a dry and "boring" question of case law after the facts of the case had been agreed by both sides. "It was never established whether or not the light fitting was already loose, or who had pulled it from the wall, or exactly how that had occurred," Mr Grey wrote. "Least of all was it agreed that Ms PVYW was 'libidinous', or had engaged in a 'sex romp'. "These characterisations are in the realm of somebody else's lurid fantasies." The minister, whose office did not respond to an invitation to comment on Mr Grey's remarks, also wrote that Comcare was seen by the community as a "soft touch", "that invites rorting" and "malingering". But Mr Grey said many of Comcare's problems were of the scheme's own making and denied his client was a malingerer. "The agreed facts specifically made it clear that having sex during her free time on the business trip did not involve any misconduct on the woman's part, either in the employment sense, or in any other sense," the barrister wrote. "She was, after all, a single woman. "Fourth, the woman's physical and psychological injuries were accepted as being genuine, and her psychological impairment as being permanent. "She was definitely not a 'malingerer'. "It is simply offensive and ignorant for the minister to describe the case that was advanced on behalf of Ms PVYW as 'spurious'."

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