War of words over pool
TOWNSVILLE MP Phillip Thompson has brushed off claims the Morrison government misled the public during the federal election campaign on the savings its reinsurance pool would achieve.
Meanwhile, Mayor Jenny Hill says the question is whether Mr Thompson was being dishonest or “plainly ignorant” of what the government’s modelling “really said”.
Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones announced the release of modelling alongside the mayor on Thursday, accusing the former government of deliberately misleading the public.
Some of that modelling, in a report dated June 28, estimates average savings in the order of 15 to 20 per cent when Mr Thompson’s election brochures say savings up to 46 per cent for homeowners and up to 58 per cent for strata properties were expected.
Mr Jones said the former government refused to release the modelling and he was doing it to be “transparent, open and honest”.
He said the Morrison government made claims it knew were not true. “They knew it was not true because the modelling shows it’s simply not true,” Mr Jones said.
Ms Hill said it “broke my heart” when the former government offered more than $700m in resilience funding for the Brisbane and Lismore floods when that same support was not offered to people in the North.
She believed people in the Morrison government knew the truth about the reinsurance pool but did not want it exposed.
Mr Thompson said the June 28 report showed the positive impact the scheme would deliver.
“The minister has been completely disingenuous with the Townsville community. We were very clear. We always said for homeowners facing the most acute cost pressures there would be savings of up to those figures, based on the advice provided at the time,” Mr Thompson said.
Townsville Lot Owners Group spokesman Andrew Turnour said the insurance crisis was a regulatory fail.
He asked if the Townsville office of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which had been closed for months, would be reopened.
Mr Jones said this would be raised with the ACCC commissioner.
Mr Jones said the reinsurance pool would operate from July 1 but that there would be a more than two-year transition for when insurers would join and any savings would flow.
He said “a lot of solutions” lay in infrastructure investment, building standards “and the way we are planning and developing our suburbs and cities”.
He said the Labor government would work with insurers and other governments to ensure premiums were minimised.