Contracts of Insurance Bill
Members, we now come to Part 6. This is the debate on clauses 165 to 168, “Regulations and miscellaneous provisions”. The question is that Part 6 stand part.
Thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to take a call on this part. I’m going to combine the questions into, essentially, one. It’s a question of prioritisation of the regulatory-making functions, under this bill, which the Minister is empowered to make.
The prioritisation exercise for making these provisions would have been entirely different before the new Subpart 4 in Part 4 was introduced, and the timing provisions are different too. Even though the regulatory-making powers under Part 4, which is related to brokers, are really important and we asked the Minister a number of questions about the regulatory-making powers in that part, they don’t have a timing requirement on them. They are required to be made in the future, and there is a real importance for them to be made, but there’s a longer time frame on them, whereas the other regulations in the bill are required to be owned within two years.
Can the Minister give some clarity on how he intends to prioritise his regulatory-making powers and on what kind of time frame we can expect the exercise of those powers of secondary legislation making to be exercised by him in Order in Council?
Just following on from Arena Williams, one of the questions I have and one of the suggestions I have is that these regulations are absolutely the guts of the bill, if you like, and they impose the real workings of where it hits the ground. I mean, I’m looking in particular at clause 165(4), which talks about the interest, and I’ve raised before that if the Minister doesn’t make these regulations, then there are real problems. Nowhere that I can see, unless I’ve missed it, is there any requirement that the regulations be made. We talked about that in respect of genetic testing, I’ve talked about it in respect of interest rates, and I would very much like to see that.
The other thing I’d say about regulations is that I see that the Minister has obligations to consult under clause 165(3). My concern in this area is always that consultation is undertaken but it’s not balanced, and I’m wondering if he could discuss whether he will be consulting with consumers or consumer organisations or whether perhaps he will be setting up some kind of reference group that can assist him to make sure that the consumer voice is properly and adequately heard when those regulations are made.
OK, well, we’re really getting into the death knells of this, aren’t we? Look, I’ll just make the general point: clause 166 there is to do with insurance intermediary arrangements. We’ve never used these arrangements before. They’ve just been carried over. I don’t really see a need for regulations to be made in respect of those. There are some very specific things that we will need to set through regulations, such as the interest rate in the event of death. There is some very specific stuff, but it’s actually very limited in nature. This is just giving the regulation-making power, which, obviously, is better than putting it into primary legislation, because of things like interest rates that you may want to change over time. There’s not a great requirement and not a great intent to go out and do a whole lot of regulations on it. Obviously, if we’re going to do that, we will be talking to all relevant parties, and I do meet with the consumer advocacy groups quite regularly, actually. I’ve met them over a number of bills. It will be horses for courses where appropriate, so I don’t think there’s any big deal in this.
I move, That debate on this question now close.