Senator Mehreen Faruqi, Deputy Greens Leader and Chair of the Select Committee on the Impact of Climate Risk on Insurance Premiums and Availability, has commented on the release of the Select Committee's Report.
The report includes eight recommendations to tackle the growing insurance affordability stress, which is being fuelled by the escalating climate crisis. Senator Faruqi urges the federal government to adopt all recommendations.
As stated by Senator Mehreen Faruqi:
"It is clear from this inquiry that insurance has become the latest major stressor for communities as they face the brunt of climate-driven disasters.
"The Government needs to step in now, listen to communities from across the country and address the insurance and climate crises. Adopting the recommendations of this report will be a good start.
"Insurance is increasingly unaffordable and unavailable because insurance companies are either pulling out or hiking premiums and making people's lives even harder.
"It's bad enough that communities are traumatised by climate-driven disasters, but then they have to suffer insurance companies and their onerous, drawn out claims process which have little-to-no transparency.
"Insurance companies should not be taking advantage of the climate crisis to jack up premiums. It's immoral, it's unethical, it's cruel for insurance companies to hike premiums by double digits, while their CEOs walk away with such hefty pay packets.
"Families, renters and retirees should not have to pay for absurdly high insurance premiums for a climate crisis they didn't cause. It's the polluting coal and gas companies which caused the climate crisis, they must be made to pay for disaster mitigation, resilience and the rising cost of insurance.
"This report is a common sense report. It captured a breadth of submissions and testimonies from the insurance sector, consumer and community groups and academics who all agree that the issue of ballooning insurance must be tackled.
"Once again, it's the Greens listening to communities and experts and adopting their advice. And once again, it's Labor and the Liberals who reject strong action because they're in bed with the fossil fuel industry."
