Page 3692 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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insurers selling CTP in New South Wales, six of whom also offer CTP insurance in Queensland.
• Chapter 3 of the bill, derived from equivalent Queensland provisions, coupled with provisions from the Civil Law (Wrongs) Act 2002, provides a new structure for dealing with CTP insurance claims.
• Chapter 4 of the bill, derived from chapter 7 of its New South Wales counterpart, provides a new mechanism for managing the licensing and regulation of CTP insurers. This chapter also requires ACT CTP insurers to provide claims and related information in the same format as they do in both Queensland and New South Wales.
These three key elements represent the foundation of the new CTP scheme. They provide NRMA and, indeed, any of the insurers offering CTP insurance in New South Wales and Queensland with an efficient, standardised platform for licensing, regulation and claims procedures.
The government expects that this bill will also:
• firstly, make it easier for NRMA to administer its responsibilities in the ACT and encourage other insurers to recognise the ACT as a compatible, open market jurisdiction; and
• secondly, modernise claims handling and procedures so that there is primary emphasis on health outcomes, as opposed to inordinately extended processes, leading to lump sum compensation, ground out over a number years.
Thus the intention is to improve health outcomes for those injured as a result of motor vehicle accidents, to foster competition, and to reduce CTP premiums.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, the problem with the existing ACT scheme is not the existence of common law rights. Such rights exemplified the principle which the ACT government defended in the wake of the 2001-02 insurance crisis, when the Insurance Council of Australia was telling us that public liability insurance would not be available in the ACT unless we savagely curtailed the rights of negligently injured persons to pursue compensation. The ACT government stood firm and has been vindicated. Public liability insurance is readily available in the ACT and, thanks to the risk management initiatives which the government has sponsored, it is affordable even for the smallest of businesses and community organisations.
The essential problem with the existing 1947 legislation is not that it preserves common law rights but that it does not require efficiency from the service providers who subsist from the scheme. My concern is directed principally at elements of the legal profession, both plaintiff and defence, who retain the habits of lawyers from a bygone era.
As a lawyer myself, it pains me to say it, but I cannot defend a system where $80, or 20 per cent out of the premium—twice the level obtained anywhere else in
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