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

The front page of the Townsville Bulletin today is about insurance going through the roof. There has been another 30 per cent increase in insurance charges in North Queensland, specifically in Townsville. That is on top of a 200 per cent increase in the last seven or eight years. People on fixed incomes are now being hit with $2,600 on average for insurance and another $2,300 for electricity charges, which were $670 prederegulation and privatisation. We can all talk about solar panels decreasing the cost. Yes, they have by 20 per cent or 30 per cent, but there is a 300 per cent increase thanks to the free-market deregulatory policies. That's to the shame of the Labor government—and I'm sure that people like Theodore, Curtin and Chifley are turning in their graves because it was the Labor Party that sold the electricity industry and the railways in Queensland.

All of the buildings in North Queensland that can be blown away, shattered or flooded are gone. The buildings that are left were built under the new codes that came out after Cyclone Tracy. The new codes are excellent. In the very big town of Innisfail, you can draw a line. I was up in a helicopter and could see that the old part of the town is gone and the new part of the town is virtually untouched, except where a house was picked up and smashed into one of the new houses. One really excellent thing the government has done is the building codes.

There is no justification for charging us 300 per cent more than the rest of Australia. A million people live in North Queensland. We're not small, and you should be cognisant that there are 12 swinging seats in North Queensland—very swinging seats. We are paying 300 per cent more than the people in rest of Australia. It has just gone up another 30 per cent. This can't be justified.

I had a little marketing business. It was supposed to sell insurance, but it didn't. All the same, I know the industry. The industry is done by actuaries. They work out how much it will cost to insure a house in this area on the basis of historical data. If you look at the historical data over the last 15 years, a significant number of all the houses in North Queensland went in some of the worst cyclones. They were not the worst cyclones. Believe me, this story about climate change is nothing compared to I think 1929 when the whole town of Innisfail ceased to exist. It was like Nagasaki after the bomb. We have had much worse cyclones. All the same, Cyclone Larry was a frightening cyclone.

So all the houses that could be destroyed have been destroyed in one or other of the last 12 or 15 cyclones. They are all gone. Those that are still standing are made to stand. So there's no justification for penalising those homeowners because some old houses got blown away in the last cyclone. There's no justification whatsoever.

In the 1920s there was the Theodore government in Queensland—one of the great early governments of the Labor Party in Queensland. They won every single seat outside of Brisbane for 50 years. Of course, when that mob shifted over to the Country Party, as we did—my family and Kevin Rudd's family are classic examples—we carried the same policies with us. When we had this situation in the 1920s the government immediately set up a state government insurance office, which made a lot of money for the state of Queensland and gave us housing insurance at an affordable and fair rate. That needs to be done again now. The responsible people out there advocate that we take this position. The federal government can most certainly underwrite the risk because there isn't any risk—all the buildings that could go have gone and all the buildings that are there will withstand the next cyclone, as they have the last 12 or 15 cyclones. (Time expired)