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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Thursday, 11 March 2004) . . Page.. 1085 ..

Ministerial Meeting on Insurance Issues—Hobart, 27 February 2004—

Ministerial report.

Joint Communique.

I ask for leave to make a statement.

Leave granted.

MR QUINLAN: Mr Speaker, this is the sixth time that I have reported to the Assembly on my attendance at various ministerial summits on insurance. As is customary, the ministers issued a joint communique. Members will recall these summits were convened in response to the public liability insurance crisis. Since then, as members will be aware, the issues have become more complex and expanded to encompass the medical and other professions, and some business groups.

The most recent summit was held on 27 February 2004. It was the seventh and, in some ways, the most important in this series of summits. The purpose of this meeting was to review progress on a very ambitious work program assigned to officials following the August 2003 summit. Ministers also received briefings from Mr Graeme Samuel, chair of the ACCC, an actuary commissioned by the ministers and by a number of insurance company chief executives.

Mr Speaker, the summit addressed three main themes:

• long-term care for catastrophically injured people;

• price movements in various classes of insurance; and

• availability of reasonably priced insurance for the broader community.

Long-term care is an issue raised by the ACT and has now been taken up in earnest by all governments. Broadly stated, the objective is to determine initially whether people who have been catastrophically injured are truly better off receiving lump sum damages or whether there is a better way of managing their lifelong future needs against the cost of provision.

It should be noted that motor accidents are the major cause of catastrophic injury. The level of injury to which I refer is acute quadriplegia or acquired brain injury requiring at least two hours of care per day for life.

Mr Speaker, for the first time in Australia, our officials, with the assistance of an actuary, have ascertained the number of catastrophic injuries per year across Australia under various statutory systems—compulsory third party and workers compensation—the amounts paid to them in lump sum damages and the global costs of rendering long-term care to them. The advice provided to ministers is that lump sum awards are, on average, dissipated within seven years. Further, the long-term care provided for in the damages is not always assessed and, if it is, often it is at a level insufficient to provide true long-term care.

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