what do you think ?

lets lay off all the insurance agencies.. some of them may be deserving but the assessor is generally going to be the one that you need to pick on..

One place that I was at dropping some stuff off and helping to get the contaminated oil out of a car and get it going again (nice old chev) walked in, talked to me a couple of minutes and asked me my opinion which was a nice short "Its all expletived" he agreed and got an over the phone approval for a 22ft hire caravan wrote off all the cars in the yard arranged towing for 3 of the newer ones and discussed "buy back" of all the old ones that were obviously worth keeping and restoring (chev/vw) and then went through the pre printed house hold policy inventory and wrote all that off without even coming in past the garage (high tide mark was easily evident by the inflatable toy stranded up near the apex of the roof)


the next one I encountered started umming and ahhing about how it may not be flood water damage, it could be storm water and that doesnt cover his vehicles or this or that and it would have to be looked into....

I very nearly had to back a trailer over his XR8.

IMHO the money should be going to anyone who had a short term emergancy style of payout and it should be limted to what you can proove you had to outlay and what you can prove you lost income wise up to the maximum. Why they arent doing the assesment and forms in the field or at the recovery centers where most of the people who really need the money are I have no idea.

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Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

lets lay off all the insurance agencies.. some of them may be deserving but the assessor is generally going to be the one that you need to pick on..

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Are you kidding? The assessor is just an arm of the insurance agency, whether he/she is employed by them or contracted...as is the case over in NZ with the earthquake assessors..mostly all ex-cops. Insurance companies are evil necessities, with policies gone over by legal eagles with a fine tooth comb to protect the company...not the insured. And when the time finally comes to call in your policy because of the flood, they turn around and hit you with "you are not covered." Germs.

First off let me say I believe in the assistance packages.
I honestly think the handout money from the government initially to buy clothing etc should be irrelevant of means testing, this is to assist people get by.
Then the second handout talked about should be rated on damage and the persons initial response (for example if you had been told to leave and did not and left stuff that could have been moved easily, you should not be as entitled as people that were flash flooded).
I personally think this is irrelevant of whether you were insured or not. There will be huge division over this as it depends on type of insurance coverage and whether your insurance coverage will or will not cover you or whether you just decided not to have insurance. If the damage is similar the assistance should be similar.
Then there is all the donations, how does that get divided up and is it going to be a complete stuff up and biased like the Victorian Fire Fund?
Then how do we compare this to other disasters that have occurred. e.g, Fire in Perth last week , 10 or so properties destroyed by a deliberately lit fire, no assistance at all for people in this situation, yet is in fact no different.
Then also the Gascoyne floods in WA. They were offered $15k after they had to go out and buy any goods needing replacement first and then submit receipts for consideration (great if you have a zero bank balance) compared to $25k for Qld flod victims no receipts needed, just proof of damage. The town of Gascoyne Junction was obliterated, nothing left and building costs and replacement of furniture is so much more expensive in parts of the country like that.
Then we also look at joe bloggs that house burns down or is flooded and is a one off case that gets no assitance either.
I am all for the assistance but I think there needs to be a national strategy for assisting people and criteria to suit. How can we say yes to one and no to another because of location?
I thought this was one of the recommendations that came out of the Victorian Bush Fire Inquiry.
However if I was fairly rich I would not be taking the funds, but as often we see the rich take all they can get. I am talking extremely wealthy not just owning your home and $50k in the bank.
Anyone found guilty of rorting the system should be jailed.
The insurance companies need to be brought to task by the govt, but we know that wont happen. They really should be sitting down with their boards and shareholders and discussing in times of national emergency like this accepting lower profits for this financial year and being socially responsible. They will more than make it up in the following years. Instead they will pay out minimum amounts and still increase insurance premiums for all and make even more record profits.
Of course the govt is already looking at a levy / tax. They could quite easily accommodate this by not worrying about a surplus and that is all our stupid PM seems to be focussed on. If we need to go into deficit for a couple of years to rebuild so be it. Stop non core spending on crap like art galleries, non core govt overseas travel etc.
They could also look at setting up a trust with big business to get some funding and repairs happening.
They should also be looking at a national recovery trust fund for future disasters with a national strategy where all are helped equally.
Also utilize the unemployed as clean up and repair crews, food distribution, catering, no ifs or butts they get out of have their centre link benefits cut.

Further to Blinknights post , some insurance companies are good as are a lot of assessors. I generally have only had good assessors, but have only ever had small claims, so can not comment on major claims.They generally are only doing their job. On the flip side some can be petty and bloody minded.

Hi,
it sure is a can of worms, and I'm glad I'm not trying to sort it out, especially the rising water flood insurance side of things.
Take 2 identical properties/policies with owners who have different attitudes/survival abilities.
One works his butt off to get everything out of the rising water and minimise damage, the other 'leaves it to the insurance'.
With rising water there is the potential for the owner to influence the insurance outcome.
Perhaps rising water insurance should be more of a pre agreed wager, and the minimum depth of flooding at which this wager becomes payable?
With decreasing odds for increasing depths, there would be some incentive to act and plan to reduce potential rising river flood damage.
cheers

My first reaction to the posts so far is that I am genuinely surprised at how circumspect people's comments have been. People seem much more aware than usual that there are not simple answers to complex problems like this one. I think that too often we (and I am quite happy to include myself in that) look at some complex issue and think the situation is black and white and that we have the answer. [End of todays' sermon]

One of the biggest problems I see in this situation is that there is a need for immediate assistance. The urgency of the situation precludes at least some of the sort of checks and scrutiny that we all like to see when taxpayers' money is spent.

Of course there will be people who will get money who don't need it or deserve it. That is not new. There are always people who will try to rort any system. However, it is probably a bit like that legal principle that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted. Although in this case the numbers would be a little different, but I suspect that if a system was set up to ensure that very few people got away with anything, the main effect would be to delay payment to people who genuinely need it right now.

Someone mentioned a means test, but I have always been a bit sceptical about means tests since the time several years ago when I saw how the means test was applied to two families I knew. One family had a single salary earner and six kids and almost no tax deductions (apart from the kids). None of his kids was eligible for AusStudy because the means test was based on taxable income. They lived in a very modest house and drive a VW Kombi.

The other family with two children earned enough to afford an overseas holiday every single year for the decade or so that I knew them. They replaced their Mercedes about every second year. Both their kids got full AusStudy because their accountant was clever enough to reduce their taxable income below the threshold.

A means test might sound like a good idea, but making it fair is not easy. That AusStudy one was patently unfair. It favoured the wealthy business owner and disadvantaged the wage or salary earner.

The problem of people getting help when they are part of a major disaster while people miss out if they suffer comparable but isolated tragedies is not new. Assistance was given to parents who lost family members in the Bali bombings, but parents who has suffer just as great a loss when a single child is taken from them overseas do not get the same support. So what is happening here is not new. It is part of a well established pattern.

I think the Government has to be fairly generous with my money because the alternative is unthinkable.

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Originally Posted by Disco44

APIA ( Australian Pensioners Insurance) also have full cover.They advertised that in local newspapers.

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Do they? They refused us insurance as our house is in a 1-in-a-100 year flood zone.

A few weeks back we had a pretty bad hailstorm here. I got up on the roof of the garage to stop some leaks but I went through the fibro breaking 2 sheets. AAMI won't cover the damage as it was caused by foot traffic. I should have let the rain do damage to the garage contents and I could have claimed that.

I know two sheets doesn't sound much but it requires replacement of 9 sheets as this fibro profile is no longer available - add to that the cost of asbestos sheet disposal. I'll probably end up having the whole garage resheeted with corrugated steel.

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Originally Posted by p38arover

Do they? They refused us insurance as our house is in a 1-in-a-100 year flood zone.

A few weeks back we had a pretty bad hailstorm here. I got up on the roof of the garage to stop some leaks but I went through the fibro breaking 2 sheets. AAMI won't cover the damage as it was caused by foot traffic. I should have let the rain do damage to the garage contents and I could have claimed that.

I know two sheets doesn't sound much but it requires replacement of 9 sheets as this fibro profile is no longer available - add to that the cost of asbestos sheet disposal. I'll probably end up having the whole garage resheeted with corrugated steel.

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That is ****ed....insurance companies..bottom of the harbour scum. Yet if you watch their ads....:no2:...just doesn't match reality.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2R_DDZPCM]YouTube - Monty Python - Motor Insurance sketch[/ame]

It was reported in the local paper that A.A.M.I. and Shannons are actually part of the Suncorp group. Dont know how true this is, but it is an interesting thought. Those who cant afford top shelf insurance could be subsidising those who can in a situation like the floods. Forrest Gump was right. Bob