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Insurance premiums skyrocket

Skyrocketing insurance premiums threaten people’s ability to live and prosper in North Queensland

 

Home insurance has skyrocketed everywhere, but property owners in the North are being slugged the most.

Many have chosen to opt out of insurance altogether.

According to the recent ACCC report, the rate of uninsured households in the North is now double the rest of the country.

The other day I had a call from a constituent whose mother had just received her latest home insurance renewal notice from Suncorp.

The poor lady was shocked to find her premium had increased more than 25% to $6,100.82.

(Over $1,000 of that amount was State Government Stamp Duty and GST).

The Mum is on a pension of just $26,000 a year, and a $6,100.82 insurance premium would reduce that to just $19,900.

She is not alone in this either.

My electorate phone rings constantly from people in distress after being hit with similar premium hikes, or even refused coverage altogether.

Those calls are just a drop in the bucket of what is happening throughout Queensland’s reef-adjacent regions.

Many are scrambling to find affordable coverage, often calling dozens of companies to find one willing to cover them at a reasonable price.

Flood cover is now pretty much out of reach for most people.

One couple told me they received quotes of between $15,000 and $20,000 for flood cover on their property in an area designated as ‘flood risk’, despite it never having flooded in the 30 years they had been there.

The blowout in insurance costs is adding significantly to the financial stress of households already struggling with similar hikes in mortgage payments, groceries, fuel and electricity.

Something needs to be done to fix it, and I’m not talking about another round of ‘disaster mitigation project studies’ money for councils either.

First up, stamp duty on insurance should be abolished. 

It’s a complete tax rort and needs to go.

Other things the government could do would be direct subsidies and rules that insurers provide a minimum number of policies in northern Australia.

Insurance is not a luxury, it’s a necessity, and it’s disgraceful that it is our old people and other vulnerable groups who are being made to suffer the most.

There’s only so much you can cut back on, when you’re a pensioner.

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OECD-led agreement

OECD’S ‘GLOBAL TAX CARTEL’ – WORSE THAN IT SOUNDS

Last year, the Morrison government signed Australia up to an OECD-led agreement creating an international tax cartel.

Labor now has the job of selling the “landmark reforms” to the Australian people and has released a ‘Consultation Paper’ calling for public feedback by 2 September.

The sales pitch is “taxing multinationals” but be warned, the OECD plan comes with a raft of dangerous fine print.  At a minimum, it involves rewriting nearly every aspect of Australia’s tax laws to fit the new rules.

OECD says its ‘Two Pillar Model Rules’ provide governments with a “PRECISE TEMPLATE” for legislating its “solution”.

Most of the focus is on the headline-grabbing new minimum tax rate of 15 percent that throttles competition between countries and makes it far easier for governments to increase the tax burden on ALL businesses and, eventually, individuals.

More insidiously, the scheme shifts enormous power over to the OECD Secretariat, turning it into a kind of global tax policeman.

There’s a word for this kind of thing.

It’s called ‘price-fixing’.

When businesses do it, politicians jump up and down and scream blue murder about ‘collusion’.

Well the OECD’s “two pillar solution” is no different.  It bears all the hallmarks of a ‘global tax cartel’.

Worse, it provides a backdoor through which the powers of parliament will be further stripped away.

As Thomas Duesterberg wrote:

“It transfers significant national sovereignty over taxation, key to overall economic policy, to some yet-to-be-defined international regime under the guidance of the OECD… “

“Ceding corporate-taxation authority to an undefined international authority that will inevitably be controlled by an unelected technocratic elite would erode democratic principles even further.”

“It moves us closer to an EU model of governance.”

It would only be a matter of time before the 15 percent tax rate was increased (Janet Yellen is already talking about it) and, ultimately, extended to individuals.

Many well-meaning people love the new tax plan, believe it will stop tax evasion and fund much-needed social programs.

The fallacy being that governments would redistribute the monies to the masses.

Don’t count on it.

They’ll spend it how they always do, on pointless, self-serving “sustainability” projects, renewables’ subsidies and more ‘woke’ behaviour change programs.

If governments really cared about ending multinational tax evasion, there are multiple ways they could do so.

Ways that don’t involve ceding sovereignty or disempowering parliament.

OECD’s plan, or as Albanese likes to call it, “Labor’s MNE Tax Plan”, is a very, very bad idea for our freedom and democracy.

The government must withdraw from it immediately.

Say “no” to ALL cartels and ANY global agreement that interfere with Australia’s sovereign right to make its own tax laws.

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