QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Dr MULINO (Fraser—Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services) (14:20): I thank the honourable member for her question. She has a longstanding involvement in these issues, and I thank her for that. The Albanese government is committed to making insurance more affordable and accessible for Australian households and businesses.

That involves a range of different approaches. One is this government is investing in the Disaster Ready Fund, through the minister for natural disasters and emergency services. That fund, at $200 million a year, is seeing the rollout of mitigation works right across the country, and that is something which is being informed by data from the insurance sector and the Hazards Insurance Partnership, which is world leading.

Whenever I travel to other countries or whenever I talk to insurance regulators in other countries, they see what we're doing in Australia through the HIP as world leading on that front. What we're also doing is strengthening the General Insurance Code of Practice. That code of practice is being finalised at the minute.

For the first time, that code of practice will be approved by ASIC and will be contractually enforceable, and we are currently engaged with both consumer groups and the insurance industry to make sure that there are a range of protections in that code of practice for consumers. In the last budget, we announced a measure that is really important to ensure that we will work towards greater price transparency in insurance.

I am now going to lead that project and work with consumer groups and the industry and experts to make sure that we can work towards an insurance industry where there is regulation to ensure that there is much more transparency when it comes to the premiums that are charged and when it comes to changes in premiums, and that there is much more transparency when there is a reduction in risk and that that is reflected in the price.

That price-transparency project is extremely important, and we have already begun discussions with consumer groups and with industry on that. This government has adopted an extremely strategic approach to these issues, because they haven't arisen overnight. They've been getting worse and worse for decades, and climate change is making these worse and worse, as you know but as those opposite do not accept.

That is one of the fundamental problems with their approach to insurance. But we are working very constructively with consumer groups, with academics, with experts and with the insurance sector to make sure that we strengthen the regulation of insurance.