CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (10:00): Conditions across Australia have changed dramatically across the past 4½ years. We see that two-thirds of Australians think that we're heading in the wrong direction. An intense wave of pessimism about our future has swept across the country.

You can see it across every demographic. Right across my electorate I can see it. I talk to small businesses, which are closing at record rates—30 a day—across the country.

You can talk to anyone in the street about the standard-of-living drop that they've seen off the back of a five per cent reduction in productivity in this country. We're getting paid more, but everything costs more than our pay rises have been and so we're going backwards. We're feeling poorer.

Young people are losing hope. We're seeing first home approvals in my region going down. Young people are having less and less hope of buying a home.

They're seeing that Australian dream get dragged away from them. Everywhere I go when I doorknock I hear a different version of this. There's the shop owner who talks about the rising energy costs even after they've installed new LED lights or new energy-efficient fridges.

Even after they've made significant investments in new technology, they're still seeing their energy bills go up and up, with no sign that that's going to reduce. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 10:01 to 10:12 Mr HAMILTON: Given the interruption, I'll make a slight departure and speak on a topic of shared love—not motorsport, or the Bathurst 1000 on the weekend, but insurance.

I thought it'd be good to take a moment to speak of the good work that the ICA has been doing on behalf of not just the insurance industry but also people who are covered with insurance and giving them opportunity to put questions to the insurers. Doing that through the parliamentary process, I think, has been an incredibly valuable experience. I was very fortunate to complete a second study tour with the ICA.

What I think is important for people to know about insurance in Australia is that there are multiple issues facing the industry across the world, as we've heard, and there are some areas in Australia that are very different. The approach of insurers in Australia to project-manage the rebuild of their customers' houses is very different to what we see across the rest of the world.

That requires a different approach—and it's a good thing. It's a good thing I'm saying that we should support, but it does put different challenges on how reinsurers price policies in Australia. That's something that we as politicians are going to have to address to help the Australian people to get insurance at a level that they can afford.

I would say the biggest lesson I've learned, across a couple of years, is that if we intervene too much in insurance we can crowd it out. I thank the ICA for their efforts.