Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Insurance has been one of the big drivers of the inflation challenge in our economy. Even as we've made some really quite substantial progress in a lot of the other categories—and insurance, I think, from memory, came off a little bit in the most recent data—it is still a big and prominent part of the CPI. The shadow Treasurer has raised this as a challenge; I think my colleagues and I have already acknowledged, in a number of different ways, the challenge of higher insurance premiums. I think we're seeing, with more and more frequent natural disasters—including the one that we're seeing play out right now in North Queensland and Far North Queensland—that that's having an impact on premiums.

The shadow Treasurer keeps chirping away as I try and give him an answer to his question. I assume then that he has some kind of policy to deal with higher insurance premiums. If he doesn't, then he should say so. The only policy those opposite have when it comes to natural disasters is to include them in the $350 billion of what they describe as 'wasteful spending'. In the mid-year budget update that I released with Minister Gallagher, one of the pressures on the budget which they describe as wasteful is another couple of billion dollars for natural disaster recovery. He asked me, 'What do natural disasters have to do with insurance?' He asked me, 'What's insurance got to do with natural disasters?' Doesn't that just say it all about the poor quality of those opposite! We're funding natural disaster relief and response. We're getting inflation down at the same time as we acknowledge that insurance is a big part of the CPI basket. If he's got any ideas or alternatives for how to get those premiums down, he should tell the House.

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