Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten says the insurance industry must "lift its game" after owners of thousands of devastated homes and businesses across the country discovered they were not covered for floods.
Mr Shorten told The Weekend Australian he won't wait for the outcome of the inquiry into the Queensland floods before seeking reforms, saying the insurance industry will not be allowed to maintain the "status quo".
"I think the challenge here is to make sure the contracts that people sign are written in plain English and clear," Mr Shorten said. "I think it is going to be important to perhaps have a better definition of flooding than exists currently in some policies."
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Mr Shorten said he's "open" to Queensland's push to introduce a standard flood definition.
An estimated half of all flood victims have not been covered because their policies cover storms or flash floods but do not consider rising waters from rivers to be floods.
He said he'll watch the outcome of the Queensland floods inquiry, but the federal government "didn't need to wait until the end of the inquiry to get down to tin tacks about fixing up some of
the low-hanging fruit to make flood insurance a better product than it is".
