Prime Minister Julia Gillard has resigned herself to having a conversation about federally-funded compulsory disaster insurance.
But she insists private insurers will always have their place in Australia.
Ms Gillard is hoping to push through parliament as soon as possible legislation setting up a controversial flood levy to help fund rebuilding efforts in flood-damaged areas in Queensland, NSW and Victoria.
But to do that she first needs to win over key crossbenchers, some of whom want a more long-term solution to protect Australia from future disasters.
"We'll end up looking into some of these issues ... (but) anything we do has to work with private insurance," Ms Gillard told Austereo on Wednesday.
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"We wouldn't want people to get the message `Don't worry about being insured anymore because if anything happens the government's going to fix it.'
"I mean, we're never going to be able to have a scheme like that."
Ms Gillard does not want talks about a long-term solution to slow the passing of the flood levy legislation.
