Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

We agitated with over 2,000 people at the meetings. The head of the Insurance Council of Australia attended the meetings throughout North Queensland. But I and my office were able to call, and we had a terrific head of steam, and the government took the steam out of us by having an inquiry. Whenever you don't want to do something, of course, you immediately have an inquiry. They were very successful in taking the steam out of us, and we were knocked over in our endeavours.

I have to put on the public record the enormously great work done by the Townsville Chamber of Commerce and the Ingham chamber of commerce, and I want to actually mention names. Ross McLennan, Ramon Jayo, Pino Giandomenico, Rodger Bow and Andrew Lancini were mayors at various times. Margaret Shaw is a Townsville advocate on insurance. Rachael Coco is an absolutely brilliant lady at the Hinchinbrook chamber of commerce. Ron Bellert is at North Queensland Insurance Brokers. I particularly acknowledge George Christensen.

Nothing was happening until George and I—God bless George—came into a meeting. Sometimes it's a bit difficult for a member of the government to go public. What these people had done was to find out that 25 per cent of the houses in North Queensland were not insured. That means that, if a cyclone hits, the government are going to be up to rebuild those houses, whether they want to or not. With that information, George and I were able to go public, and I give most of the credit to him. It cost me nothing but it cost him plenty to do that. Suddenly it was switched on again. We thank the government for having looked at what is the sensible approach to this. Once the insurance companies know that there is a reinsurance pool there, they can proceed to give us the insurance at a reasonable rate.

As I have said four million times on this issue, all of the houses that are goable—the old houses—are gone. Cyclones appear every four or five years, and each cyclone takes out a certain number of houses in North Queensland. In Innisfail, with the worst cyclone in Australian history for its intensity and its speed, Cyclone Larry, half the houses in Innisfail vanished and the other half were quite alright. The other half were the ones built after the cyclone in Darwin, under the post-cyclone codes. We now build houses that can withstand cyclones. So all the houses that are goable are gone. So really the government are providing a reinsurance pool that they will never need to dip into very much at all, because the houses that are there now will withstand any cyclone that nature wants to throw at us. So really it's not a very big ask from the government, but all the same we thank the government very sincerely for taking this initiative. I want to put on record those fighters who found out that 25 per cent of the houses were not insured, which enabled the member for Dawson, George Christensen, and me to switch it back on. I pay a very great tribute to the member for Dawson, who is leaving this place as well.

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