Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Cyclone and Flood Damage Reinsurance Pool) Bill 2022. At the outset I advise that Labor will be supporting this bill. Across Australia millions of people are struggling with the rising cost of living. Under Mr Morrison and Mr Joyce petrol prices and the costs of living generally are skyrocketing, and working families are falling behind. This has been something that has received very little attention from the government until just very recently, and—surprise, surprise—with an election in view this now appears to be a priority, with the government having done pretty much nothing about it for the last nine years. If the government actually cared—if they actually cared about the cost of living, if they cared about pressures on families—those opposite would not have spent a decade attacking wages, attacking job security and attacking Medicare. The reality is that everything—everything—is going up for Australians, except for their pay.

This bill is designed to address some of the very specific cost pressures that affect Australians that live in parts of the country that are especially exposed to natural disaster. Labor recognises there have been significant increases in the cost of insurance for households and small businesses in parts of Australia, particularly in northern Australia. Let's be clear about this: the increasing cost of insurance is directly related to the increased risk of damage to life and property from severe weather events associated with climate change. I recall the warnings that were assembled and put very, very clearly by insurance companies 15 years ago. I remember the work they did trying to convince the Howard government to do something about climate change, but that government was populated by climate deniers, just like this one. They did absolutely nothing to tackle climate change, and the problem is, as we are now seeing, that a warming world is expensive. Aside from the costs that it imposes to the economy generally, it puts very significant pressure on household and business budgets and it is leading to underinsurance in certain regions of Australia.

In recent years, there have been several reviews and inquiries into the availability and affordability of insurance in northern Australia. Despite all these reviews, despite all the recommendations, the Morrison government has failed to act until now, in what is likely to be the final week of the parliament. It is the final week of the parliament and they want people to think they care about the cost of living and underinsurance and the impacts of climate change on the community. Labor has been calling on the Morrison government to release the details of the reassurance pool and, in particular, the modelling upon which its claims of reductions in premiums are based. The Morrison government still refuses to release it.

And it's not only Labor that wants to see the workings, wants to see the numbers and doesn't believe what this group of incompetents and charlatans on the other side are telling us about their policies. Insurance bodies, key stakeholders, want to see it, too. Many of them haven't seen the modelling or the key assumptions that would allow them to provide information to their members about the impacts of this policy. In its submission to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee inquiry into this bill the RACQ said:

To date, RACQ cannot assess the impact the pool will have on our member's home insurance premiums, primarily because we have not received proposed pricing rates or associated modelling from the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation.

It's something the minister might want to consider addressing in replying and summing up. Why won't they show people the numbers? Why won't they provide the information that the sector is asking for?

This bill represents a belated engagement with emergency management and natural disaster. As I said, the truth is that climate change is making things worse. We actually need a government that recognises the threat posed by climate change and that accepts responsibility for both the long-term and short-term solutions to this problem. People on the North Coast and South-East Queensland have been devastated by recent floods. It might have prompted a competent government—a caring government, a responsive government, a government thinking about its people—into some kind of action. However, when the Prime Minister finally travelled to the Northern Rivers, what was it for? It was for a photo opportunity—not to meet with the flood victims, not to meet with the community members who so explicitly had wanted and sought an explanation for why his government had abandoned them at a time of desperate need. What is it about this guy, what is it about this Prime Minister, that makes him desperate for self-promotion but equally desperate to avoid meeting with people battling to get a hearing? Mr Morrison is so invested in avoiding responsibility that he no longer even notices the real people who suffer the consequences of his failures. This is the same Prime Minister who has presided over an inequitable distribution of assistance that has seen people receive different amounts of money depending on where they live and, in some cases, depending on who their local MP is. Shame.

I was born in a flood. I was born in the hospital in Murwillumbah in the flood in 1973. Those communities, whom I know so well, understand natural disaster and the collective community effort and solidarity that is necessary to respond. In the aftermath of the floods just a few weeks ago, I was actually stranded. I was visiting my mum and dad and I was at their place in the midst of the emergency. I should qualify that by saying they were in no danger—but plenty of people in that community were. A week later, I returned to Lismore to meet with some of the people I know there, some of the leaders and community organisations I know there, to assist them in cleaning up and talk with them about what they needed. It was a very big day with a lot of emotion. What was immediately evident, though, was the community spirit that I talked about. People were cheerfully supporting one another, staffing evacuation centres, donating food, helping one another clean up. Emergency services and frontline workers were working around the clock. Municipal workers were camping up at the dam, night after night after night, day after day after day, to make sure that the supply of potable water wasn't interrupted when so many other interruptions had occurred. Thank you to those workers. As one of their representatives in parliament, I cannot thank them enough for everything they have done.

But there were also plenty of tears on that trip, because the damage is enormous. Many of the people I met had lost their house and their place of work. I don't think you can understand the scale of destruction if you haven't been there. The people who are running community organisations are devastated. Their job—and they know it; they understand their responsibilities—is to support people in their most desperate times, people facing domestic and family violence, an area that's of importance to me, but the premises from which they provide those services have been completely destroyed. We know from experience that, tragically, in times of community trauma, the incidence of violence is likely to increase, but people have no services to turn to in a time of need because of the damage that's been done to the premises of those community organisations. I don't see any response to that from this government or any interest in responding to it. It's vitally important that, in addition to disaster payments provided to individuals, the government quickly assess what is required to ensure that the community of Lismore and the broader communities of the Northern Rivers, so many of whom have been affected by flood, are not left without vital community services.

As I said at the beginning of my contribution, Labor supports the establishment of a reinsurance pool for northern Australia. We've been willing to cooperate with the Morrison government on the establishment of this pool. However, the establishment of a reinsurance pool on its own will not be enough to significantly reduce insurance premiums in the north of Australia. This policy must be accompanied by others that reduce the risk of damage to property in the future. It should be linked to better planning rules, investment in mitigation infrastructure, retrofitting buildings and building for resilience into the future. Labor recognises this. My colleague Senator Watt has joined us in the chamber. I know that he is so proud of Labor's Disaster Ready Fund, which will allocate up to $200 million per annum for disaster readiness and mitigation measures. It's in stark contrast to the actions of the Morrison government, which locked up the $4.8 billion Emergency Response Fund for three years, only to start releasing funds on the eve of an election. That's no way to govern. It's not a responsible way to govern and it's not good enough. This fund could have built flood levees, drainage improvement, cyclone shelters and bushfire evacuation centres. It could have been used to keep people safe. Instead, it was used as a cash cow for Scott Morrison and his government. It earned them over $830 million in interest in the period that it was just sitting there, and in three years it has not spent a cent on disaster recovery or even started building a single disaster mitigation project. Under Labor's policy, up to $200 million per year will be invested in disaster readiness to protect lives and livelihoods.

An Albanese government will ensure that the establishment of a reinsurance pool is just one of a suite of measures to reduce the risk of loss of life and property associated with the increasing risk of severe weather. If we are elected to government, if we have that privilege, we will investigate adding flood coverage to the reinsurance pool as part of the 2025 statutory review of the operation of that pool. But I tell you what: Australians shouldn't have to wait until an election is imminent before their government decides to keep them safe.