Mr JONES (Whitlam—Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services) (14:18): I thank the member for Fowler for her question and for the good wishes that she extends to all members of this House, and I return those to the member for Fowler as well. We know that Australian households and businesses are doing it tough, and insurance affordability is a key driver of those pressures. Since coming to government, the government has put in place a comprehensive plan to help address some of the drivers of insurance costs. When you're looking at the key driver of insurance costs, it's the underlying risk, whether that's severe weather events, including severe weather events exaggerated by climate change; whether it's a century of poor planning decisions and inefficient or improper building standards which mean we're building the wrong houses and the wrong buildings in the wrong places; or, indeed, whether it's decisions of local or state governments which are adding to the accumulated costs in insurance for businesses and households around the country. In fact, there are some immediate things that other tiers of government could do to address insurance affordability. One would be to address the stamp duty impost on insurance contracts, which is adding a tax on a tax for insurers, households and small businesses. Local governments, indeed, continue to do dumb things by building the wrong buildings in the wrong places. If there is anyone in this place who has the capacity to influence local governments in the decisions they are making around approvals and planning processes then that would add to improving insurance affordability across the country. There are some things the Commonwealth government is looking at. In particular, I want to pay tribute to the fantastic work that the member for Fraser has done as chair of the House economics committee, ably assisted by I see the member for Macquarie and the member for Calare, who was instrumental in establishing this committee. A tremendous body of work has been put in place by this committee, with 89 recommendations, some of them to government, some of them to industry and some of them to regulators. Over the coming months we will be working through those recommendations and will have a response to parliament and the community in the early stages of next year. But there is work underway the moment and that includes the establishment of the Disaster Ready Fund, $1 billion, that we have established to spend over the next five years to put in place mitigation efforts, particularly in those disaster-prone regions, to ensure we can firm up infrastructure, and fund community and household-level improvements. We have established a housing insurance partnership so we can have the data and information that insurers have available to communities to put downward pressure on insurance premiums. There is a lot of work happening, a lot more to come.