"The submission of the appellant is, however, that in so far as s.88(4) admittedly creates a notional or fictional industrial deafness occurring on a particular date as though, contrary to the fact, it happened all at once at that time arising out of or in the course of employment at that time (perhaps with the proviso that the employment was relevantly noisy, which is unnecessary here to decide) that is as far as the fiction goes. Thereafter, as the logic of the argument would compel, it is necessary to revert to the fact (as distinct from the fiction) that the industrial deafness of the respondents resulted to some extent from traumata in their employment before the appointed day. In my opinion, the fiction is not to be set aside in that way, particularly as s.82(6), s.90(3) and perhaps s.129 are indicia that the legislative intent is to the contrary. Regard must also be had to the difficulty of providing compensation for industrial deafness and the history of legislative attempts to deal with it. The problems are obvious. The contributions of particular employment to the onset and development of industrial deafness cannot be quantified or assessed retrospectively, if at all, with any precision. The industrial deafness provisions of the A.C.A. (principally ss.88 to 90) were adapted from Div.3A of the Workers Compensation act which was introduced in 1981 by Act No. 9613 to deal specially with the difficulties which I have mentioned, The Bill for Act No. 9613 was introduced by Mr. Ramsay, then Minister for Labour and Industry, who, in his second reading speech, 30 October 1981 said: 'The new division will be the sole basis for compensation of industrial deafness. It is not dissimilar to the existing provisions of the act covering industrial diseases. This division determines when the industrial deafness will be deemed to have occurred, permits the worker to claim against one employer only, and provides that the amount of compensation will be in accordance with the existing provisions of the Act.' (Hansard, p.2435.) Division 3A represented an attempted solution different from that of New South Wales where workers compensation legislation came to deem boilermaker's deafness an industrial disease. This was not done in Victoria. The New South Wales legislature, however, sought to deal with the difficulties after they had been highlighted there by the well known commission decision of Milne v. International Combustion Australia Ltd. [1953] WCR (NSW) 80. On 1 December 1960, s.16(1A) was introduced into the Workers' Compensation Act 1926-60 (NSW) and provided: 'Where an injury mentioned in the first column of the said table is a disease which is of such a nature as to be contracted by a gradual process and which has not resulted in incapacity, such injury shall, for the purpose of determining a worker's right to the amount indicated in the second column of the said table, be deemed to have happened at the time when such worker makes his claim for compensation.' The section went on to provide that 'disease' included the condition known as 'boilermaker's deafness'. In Commissioner for Railways v. Bain [1965] HCA 5; (1965) 112 CLR 246 the High Court held that the effect of s.16(1A) was to give a worker suffering from boilermaker's deafness a right to compensation for the full extent of the loss of hearing from which he was in fact suffering at the dates specified by the statute not merely for the loss of hearing suffered between the time when the condition became compensable and that date. Barwick CJ said, at p.257: 'According to the meaning which, in my opinion, should be given to the words of the amending section, the worker is to be entitled upon an application made after the enactment of the amendment to be compensated for his physical condition at the date of that application by a lump sum payment under s.16. No doubt his then condition is a product of past events but by the express words of the statute it is to be treated as having occurred at the date of his application, i.e. at a time subsequent to the making of the amendment. This does give him a right to compensation for the present result of the progressive deterioration of his hearing caused during many prior years of boilermaking.' (Emphasis added.) It can thus be seen that the solution in New South Wales has been understood to provide compensation on the footing that the whole deafness, no matter over what period it arose and progressed or by what employment at what time it was compounded, occurred at the one time so as to become compensable as if in truth it had done so. In my opinion, a fiction of the same kind has been adopted to achieve a similar solution in Victoria. Here, however, industrial deafness is not deemed to be a disease nor restricted to boilermaker's deafness. Industrial deafness is treated separately and compensation provided for it."