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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (1 September) . . Page.. 1669 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

I have no doubt at all that what it will end up doing is applying the levy in almost exactly the same way as it is applied in New South Wales. That makes sense because, to the best of my knowledge, every insurance company which operates in the ACT also writes policies in New South Wales. Therefore, to have a requirement in the ACT about the way in which they should write their policies and impose the levy for one particular class of policyholders, which does not conform with the way in which they write their policies in other parts of New South Wales - and they would have the same computers spewing out the policy renewals, the premium renewals, no doubt, for the whole of the ACT and New South Wales - - -

Debate interrupted.

MR SPEAKER: Order! It being 5 o'clock, I propose the question:

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

Mr Humphries: I require the question to be put forthwith without debate.

Question resolved in the negative.

Debate resumed.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and Community Safety and Minister Assisting the Treasurer): Mr Speaker, the problem is that we would end up with a different arrangement operating in the ACT than operates in New South Wales. Members have come into this place today and argued extensively from the position of the Insurance Council. I have no doubt whatever that if they went back and asked the Insurance Council about this amendment they would get a very clear indication from them that they should not accept the amendment - not because it necessarily helps the Government not to have it but because it interrupts their capacity to deal flexibly with the way in which they exact the money from their policyholders to pay the levy.

What the levy does is impose a burden of $10m across all the insurance companies that operate in the ACT in proportion to the amount of business that they write. How they, in turn, apply that levy to individual policyholders is a matter for them. If we find, as Mr Kaine suggested in the issue he raised earlier today and his amendment now, that some companies are going to hit unit plans more heavily than they would in New South Wales, let me say, first of all, that is exceedingly unlikely because it means constructing a different model in the ACT from what they have in New South Wales, which must be more cumbersome for them administratively; and, secondly, the next insurance company that comes along is bound to break with that practice and stick with

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