ALP call to act on insurer report

LABOR is pushing for the federal government to consider the recommendations handed down in the ACCC Northern Australia insurance report.

Assistant opposition spokesman for financial services Matt Thistlethwaite said the party wanted the government to consider and implement the recommendations, despite the report being widely criticised.

Mr Thistlethwaite said the government needed to “get on” with responding to the recommendations.

“The government has been in for eight years. They’re all talk, no action. They’ve been talking about fixing this issue and a reinsurance pool and they’ve done nothing,” he said.

He said if Labor was elected, and there was still no Northern Australia insurance solution in place “Labor would work on implementing as many of those recommendations as possible and partnering with the states on the issue … (and) retrofitting existing homes to make them future-proofed”.

Mr Thistlethwaite said Labor would look at working with the Coalition on a reinsurance pool if it included better planning rules and standards to reduce risk.

The Sydney-based MP said he had heard stories of insurance nightmares in North Queensland.

“Some residents and businesses simply can’t get in

Matt Thistlethwaite.

surance because insurers are making it unaffordable, they’re pulling out of the market,” Mr Thistlethwaite said.

He said a Labor government would work with the insurance industry to address issues around affordability and the role the state governments can play in public mitigation, retrofitting homes and planning rules.

Herbert MP Phillip Thompson, who has been advocating for an insurance solution since he was elected, said he wouldn’t be “dictated to” by someone who lived in Sydney “and wants to talk about what we should be doing in North Queensland”.

He said this was a “market failure of an essential service”.

“It’s failed for decades. The ACCC report was watered down, it wasn’t a good report,” he said.

Mr Thompson said a reinsurance pool would work in a situation where there was no insurance, which was already happening in the North.

“He would know that, if he knew anything about North Queensland,” he said.