Page 1173 - Week 03 - Thursday, 31 March 2011
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that will deliver better outcomes for injured people and at the same time at the very least place downward pressure on premiums.
My small amendment seeks to insert the first sitting week in March 2012 as the reporting date for the public accounts committee. While this appears to be a long way off, the debate is set in the context of the statutory review taking place and the need for the committee to have a reasonable amount of time to consider the review findings. If it is possible for the committee to report earlier, the Greens would certainly welcome that.
Our primary concern must be for the welfare of injured people. The potential premium reductions need to be balanced with what could be very serious consequences for the rest of injured people’s lives. While some in the community may well be happy to rush into a decision that would reduce the cost of their compulsory third-party premiums, I think if they found themselves in a car accident and entitled to less compensation they might well want to take that opportunity to go back and pay the extra premium to ensure they were adequately compensated.
Whilst I do hope that the inquiry can be completed before the date of March 2012 set out in my amendment so that we can resolve the issue as soon as possible, I think this is the earliest reasonable time we can require a report from the committee.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relations) (11.39): There is no doubt—and I support other members’ comments here this morning—that this is very significant law reform. It is appropriate, I believe, that members have available to them all the information they need to make an appropriate decision around these laws. I cannot help but stand here and say that part of me believes that there is an interest in delaying having to make some tough decisions. We went out with an exposure draft in October. This issue has been fairly prominent in the media for some time and it is at the end of March that people decide it needs to be referred to a committee.
I have no doubt that this issue will not be resolved in 2012, and that is because of the nature of the reform it seeks to implement and the preparedness of stakeholders within this community, particularly within the CTP market, to wage an extremely expensive PR campaign against these changes. And we have seen what they have done prior to 2011. That is just a taste of what they will do in 2012 if these changes come back. I have been around here for long enough to know that the Assembly does not invite controversial law reform in the last year of an electoral cycle. And that is being as blunt as I can be today.
I think it is extremely important for the CTP market as a whole that this issue be dealt with this year. As I said to Mrs Dunne in committee and in answer to questions in this place, I have been seeking to provide members with an appropriate level of information. I accept that for members in this place that has been a deficit that we need to fix. At this point in time we have not reached agreement with the NRMA about the form of that information. There are some concerns from the insurer that, depending on the granularity of the information provided, competitors would be able to pull together enough of that data, if it is released publicly, for them to be
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