Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

He hasn't been doing that for six years, has he? He's pointed out exactly what I'm saying. This is from the member for Dawson:

We have hit a crisis point with insurance in North Queensland. Premiums are skyrocketing and some insurance companies are refusing to provide cover in certain 'disaster prone' areas, leaving little to no market competition.

Maybe the member for Dawson has read the report. The rest of the government haven't read the report, but it seems the member for Dawson has read the report. He says, 'Right now I am lobbying both state and federal governments to take action.' The member for Dawson is a member of the government and has been a member of the government for six years and he hasn't done anything until now. Now he wants to tell people in his community that he's out there fighting for them, fighting within the government. Well, I'll tell you what: if the member for Dawson wants to actually take action on this issue, he can start by doing a number of things. He can ask the ministers to answer the questions that I asked at estimates: when will we get a response? He can ask the government to implement the recommendations from the ACCC report. Just walk into a minister's office, ask them to draft legislation, talk about it in your party room and bring it to the table in parliament. We'll support the recommendations. Make sure that it's here. Get it through the Senate. We'll support it. But the member for Dawson knows that this isn't about actually getting anything done or fixing the crisis that they have been talking about for six years. This is about getting out there and campaigning in regional Queensland and bashing up the state government, even though 24 of these recommendations are for the federal government and five of them are for the Queensland government. But this is about going out and bashing the state government. Well, I'll tell you what. People are sick of it. You said you would fix this crisis. It's about time that you took responsibility for it.