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Insurance Profits Soar While Australians Struggle

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During Senate Estimates in October, I raised an issue that’s hurting Australians — insurance costs.

Health Insurance: Private hospitals across Australia are under extreme stress because of funding shortfalls from insurers, yet those same insurers are posting record profits — over $5 billion. Why are hospitals being starved while insurers rake in billions?

The ACCC Chair acknowledged the challenges but said they haven’t actively investigated this. She noted that private hospitals face rising costs and tough negotiations with a small number of insurers — a clear sign of limited competition.

Home and Car Insurance: On paper, there are 11 home insurers, many just brands under the same company. Suncorp owns AAMI and Apia; CGU and NRMA are both IAG. That means only eight real players. Car insurance is even worse — 12 brands, yet only six actual companies. When I asked the ACCC if this lack of competition worried them, they expressed their concern and said that they’re reviewing IAG’s proposed acquisition of RACWA because it could remove an important competitor.

Australians are furious about insurance premiums skyrocketing in areas that have never flooded, and never will, based on speculative climate change claims. Insurers argue that future flooding risk justifies massive hikes, even though extreme weather trends are flat. I asked if the ACCC has looked at how insurers justify these increases in a low-competition market. The answer? No.

All five publicly listed insurance companies share the same major shareholders — BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and Norges Bank. These global asset managers hold significant stakes across insurers and banks. I asked if the ACCC considers the impact of these interlocked holdings. They said they’re aware of the investors yet will only act if they see evidence of coordinated conduct.

— Senate Estimates | October 2025

Transcript

CHAIR: Senator Roberts.  

Senator ROBERTS: Insurance is the second most painful item on the consumer’s shopping list after groceries. There’s a lot of pain. I’ll go to the hospital aspect and then to the competition aspect. Private hospitals across Australia are under extreme stress because of funding shortfalls from the health insurers. We’ve been told this by many. Why are private hospitals being starved out of existence when the health insurers have recently recorded record profits of more than $5 billion?  

Ms Cass-Gottlieb: There will be a number of factors there. They’re not questions, I believe, that we have actively looked at. Some relate to the level of competition among private hospitals, but they need to negotiate with a small number of private health insurers. That leads to difficulties for them in that bargaining situation. We’re also aware that the private hospital sector, from recent events, has been facing significantly increased costs at the same time as they are having to undertake complex negotiations in relation to coverage from private health insurers.  

Senator ROBERTS: What I’ll do is I’ll go to the lack of competition that you talked about with the insurance companies and come back to this and the hospitals. There are 11 companies in Australia offering home insurance. We’re going away from health to home. Of these, Suncorp, AAMI and Apia are the same entity and CGU and NRMA are the same entity, meaning there are only eight companies offering home insurance. Is that what you meant by limited competition in insurance?  

Ms Cass-Gottlieb: There I was particularly talking about health insurance. But you are right that, partly as a result of prior acquisitions, a number of the groups have multiple brands, but it’s actually one insurance company behind it.  

Senator ROBERTS: Similarly, there are 12 insurance companies doing car insurance. IAG owns CGU and NRMA and has underwriting ties to RACV. Separately, Suncorp, AAMI, Apia, Bingle and GIO are all the same entity. This means there are only six companies in the car insurance market hiding behind several different logos. So it’s the same. Are you worried about the lack of competition in the retail insurance market?  

Ms Cass-Gottlieb: We are certainly very focused on this. We currently are assessing, under the informal merger assessment regime, a proposed acquisition by IAG of the RACWA, which is the Western Australian Royal Automobile Club. We have put out for public response a statement of issues concerned about the removal of the Royal Automobile Club. Our preliminary view set out in that statement of issues is that they provide a very important competitive constraint.  

Senator ROBERTS: We know that, in the home insurance market, insurance companies are putting up premiums on homes and businesses in areas that are supposedly affected by flooding despite never having flooded. In fact it will never flood. The argument is that, owing to climate change, which we’re told is coming sometime in the future, your property is now likely to flood, so premiums are going up, and they’re going up exponentially. I wonder if you use flags like these. Suncorp is making so much money out of insurance that it sold its bank in order to grow its insurance business. That tells you how profitable it is. Have you looked at the basis on which insurance companies are increasing premiums in a low-competition environment using specious claims of global warming when extreme weather events have not changed? There’s been no trend. It’s just flat.  

Ms Cass-Gottlieb: We haven’t looked at that specific issue, no.  

Senator ROBERTS: The answer for people is not to change insurance companies—they can’t, because they’re all the same. They’ve got similar policies, similar conditions and the same shareholders. Specifically, all five publicly listed insurance companies in Australia have the same shareholders. I’m not trying to verbal you, but I think I asked you if you had heard of BlackRock, and you said no. Was it you?  

Ms Cass-Gottlieb: We have heard of BlackRock.  

Senator ROBERTS: Maybe I misunderstood. That’s why I checked; I don’t want to verbal you. The most notable common shareholders across all five entities based on top 10 holdings are BlackRock, a global asset manager which owns five to eight per cent of insurance companies. With State Street, it’s the same deal. They’re a global adviser with six to 16 per cent. That’s even more. Vanguard Group is the same type of entity, with five to six per cent. Norges Bank Investment Management has only two per cent, but they have a combined controlling interest, and these funds apparently are interlocked. Are you aware of these significant holdings that basically control our insurance companies?  

Ms Cass-Gottlieb: What you are describing in terms of global funds managers and global funds does not surprise me in relation to who would look to invest in insurance companies. As to your comment that they’re interlocked, a number of those will be operated and will be advised and managed independently. It’s possible what you’re referring to is that they have either financing or shareholding agreements relating to the particular investment. Those elements are not ones that we would be aware of.  

CHAIR: Senator Roberts, do you have many more questions?  

Senator ROBERTS: I can put some on notice.  

CHAIR: That would be great.  

Senator ROBERTS: I just have a couple more questions. Are you aware that the banks are similar to the insurance companies—Westpac, NAB, ANZ, Commonwealth? Basically we’ve got one bank, it seems, owned by the same controlling shareholders, the same entities that I just mentioned. We have four banks that hide behind four logos, but they have similar policies, similar conditions, similar products and similar strategies. They’re effectively controlled by BlackRock, Vanguard et cetera.  

Ms Cass-Gottlieb: In relation to the four banks, I’m also aware that there are both individual Australian shareholders and Australian super fund investors in them as well.  

Senator ROBERTS: Is there any consideration given to investigating BlackRock’s behaviour, for example, or State Street’s, Vanguard’s or Norges’s and their connections with each other?  

Ms Cass-Gottlieb: Where there are situations where the ACCC sees both common shareholdings and interlocking directorships, we take that into account if we see conduct that we think indicates concerted action, but we would need to see conduct that we considered indicated concerted action between the relevant companies.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’ll put five questions on notice.

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Australia’s Largest Wage Theft – Finally Acknowledged

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Six years ago, I exposed a $1.3 billion wage theft scandal involving BHP, multinational labour hire firms, union bosses, and the Fair Work Commission. Casual coalminers were underpaid, stripped of entitlements, and betrayed by those meant to protect them.

Despite ridicule, I persisted. Now, the truth is accepted—but the workers still haven’t been fully compensated. Labor ignored One Nation’s equal pay bill, that would enable the back payment of stolen wages, then copied some of it under pressure. Labor’s Bill did not seek the reimbursement of the stolen wages which had been enabled by the unions in cahoots with dishonest employers.

Labor continue to protect union donors and multinational corporations to the detriment of honest workers.

One Nation stands alone in fighting for justice, recovery of the stolen wages, and accountability. We won’t stop until every coalminer is paid what they’re owed.

Transcript

It’s ironic that six years after me first raising in the Senate the issue that BHP and other multinational mining companies, together with labour hire companies, colluding with the coalmining union bosses and the Fair Work Commission, perpetrated Australia’s largest case of wage theft. An estimated $1.3 billion was ripped off workers.  

I first raised this in July 2019, together with clear breaches in statutory provisions for workers compensation, leave, long service leave and other provisions. I was met with ridicule. Slowly, with my persistence and solid data as evidence, my claims were increasingly accepted and now are accepted. Yet here we have before us yet another Fair Work Act bill, yet another change to the Fair Work Act. While we support this bill, I raise concerns with the Fair Work Act itself yet again. 

Getting back to BHP and the CFMEU colluding with the labour hire companies, stealing wages and conditions from workers that the government is finally recognising is wrong, I am wearing down my opponents in parliament and the bureaucracy, in one of Australia’s largest and most powerful unions, in one of Australia’s most powerful industries, in some of the world’s largest mining companies and in the world’s largest labour hire firm, Japan’s Recruit Holdings. Who would have thought that the Labor Party, formerly touting itself as the party of the worker, could actively cover up theft from workers? Who could have thought it? What about Labor colluding with major multinational mining corporations, major multinational and Australian labour hire firms and major union bosses to hammer, abuse and steal from Australian workers? These are workers who keep the lights on and who earn export income for what oscillates between Australia’s largest and second-largest export income earner, the coal industry. Labour hire companies, particularly in coal mining, have been consistently underpaying miners to rip off and abuse casual workers who are really working regular full-time hours with the full knowledge and agreement of the CFMEU and MEU bosses and employers. They are stripped of award protections, conditions and entitlements. 

I introduced the first equal work, equal pay bill. Labor did not vote for it. They did not support it, saying they would introduce their own. Eventually—a long wait—we shamed Labor into doing their equal work, equal pay bill. They followed One Nation. Equal work for equal pay should be a norm, yet what about the millions—an estimated $1.3 billion—owed in back pay to those who are ripped off? What about them? Some workers were shortchanged more than $40,000 each per year. One complaint lodged with the Fair Work Ombudsman recently as a result of my work revealed a worker is owed $211,000 for years of back pay. It’s wage theft. These workers deserve to be compensated for their years of being underpaid. It’s a rort that goes back to 2014 and has its roots in the Rudd-Gillard Labor fiasco, with former minister Shorten in 2010 overseeing changes in coal-mining long-service leave provisions, making it possible to hide the other breaches of industrial law in the coal sector. They were hidden until I applied the spotlight relentlessly for 6½ years. When will this Labor government go all the way to compensate those workers, whose losses the union bosses should have stopped, not enabled? When will this Labor government go all the way to compensate those whose losses the Fair Work Commission should have stopped, not approved? 

Two entities, the CFMEU/MEU bosses and the Fair Work Commission, who should have protected Australian workers, in fact enabled Australia’s largest wage theft from honest workers and then vigorously denied it, thereby helping to cover it up. They were hiding the rip-off of workers to make large multinational labour hire firms in the world’s largest mining company unlawful profits that are exported overseas. The profits are exported. How? Those coalminers had worked under an award that did not allow casuals to work in the black-coal industry. The CFMEU then negotiated an enterprise agreement that included casuals who were grossly underpaid. Their employers and the Fair Work Commission went along with this, even though the better off overall test was not satisfied. This legal requirement was boldly sidelined and breached. The union entered into a secret agreement with the employer to not represent the workers seeking a remedy with the employer. The union signed away its rights to protect workers. It was part of the shabby agreement. 

As a former underground-coalface miner and union member and as a former coalmine manager and coal-mining executive, I was absolutely stunned and disgusted at the bold exploitation of Australian workers. I was determined. I remain determined, and now I’m encouraged. Yet, after six years, those coalminers still have not received their fair compensation. One Nation will continue to be the only party that pushes for repayment to those coalminers of their stolen wages. 

When I first met with workers in the Hunter, way back in 2019, I drafted three aims for guiding our work that I anticipated would push us against roadblocks from the perpetrators of Australia’s largest wage theft. I will state these aims again: to recover the lawful and moral entitlements of casual coalminers; to stop these abuses across the coal industry; and to expose and punish the guilty. These three aims continue to guide us. Why does this Labor government continue on a path that ignores those ripped-off coalminers? Who are they protecting? Labor is protecting union bosses and what is one of the largest donors to Labor election campaign funds—the CFMEU, now the MEU. Labor is protecting the world’s largest foreign multinational labour hire corporations supplying casual workers to government contracts, costing Australian taxpayers billions of dollars. This is big money. Labor is protecting the world’s largest multinational mining corporations, lacking the integrity and nous to negotiate legal agreements with workers. Labor is protecting its Fair Work Commission. 

Despite these huge and powerful forces, One Nation is making progress in giving casual miners tangible hope and the real possibility of compensation. The Fair Work Act is not fit for purpose. Industrial relations needs to return to protecting workers and employers, particularly small business. But it must protect workers. Workers are no longer protected in this country under Labor. One Nation is the only party now protecting workers. 

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Australian’s Data Must be Protected

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With a Digital ID framework established, our data is more important than ever. Why does it seem like the government is willing to hand Australian data centres over to foreign interests?

The government is more interested in serving their donors, who are connected to multinational corporations, than in looking after Australians. Only One Nation will put Australians’ interests first and protect their data.

Transcript

We have to wonder whether this government is capable of stopping any bit of Australia being sold to foreign multinational corporations, or is it all just part of its digital ID plan? We’re going to find out when the Foreign Investment Review Board makes its decision on the $24 billion buyout of Australian-founded data firm AirTrunk. AirTrunk is the largest data centre platform in the entire Asia-Pacific region. A conglomerate of multinational investment firms and foreign pension funds is about to buy it. It wasn’t that long ago the government somehow let China buy a 99-year lease to control the Port of Darwin, Australia’s most northern and strategically vital port. Less than a year ago, the Albanese government decided to keep letting China own the 99-year port lease. Many are still dumbfounded. How could we ever let this happen? 

As data becomes as valuable as gold in an increasingly digital world, we may one day look back at the sale of AirTrunk in the same way. Data is fast becoming an essential utility for the entire world. All the opportunities a digital world presents are clear yet the risks of profit-hungry corporations and increasingly tyrannical governments abusing digital identity outnumber the benefits. 

In a digital identity world, where privacy protections are paper-thin, sovereign control of our data centres is a matter of economic and national security, and personal security. Unfortunately, except in the most severe and blatant cases, the Foreign Investment Review Board has a track record of not appreciating the importance of Australians owning Australia. We can anticipate that the Foreign Investment Review Board will rubber-stamp this deal, like so many others. The data centres that Australians’ sensitive data passes through and sits in will become foreign-owned. Let’s put Australians first and ban foreign ownership of sensitive companies.  

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It’s Time to Tax Multinationals

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Transcript

Why? That’s one question that I want to ask repeatedly in this speech. I see the government’s changes as a welcome step, but it’s a tiny, tiny step and we need many, many more. It could be one of my footprints, Senator Ayres! We see the government’s previous tax changes. They weren’t cuts; they were changes. As a result of those changes, we will see the government increase revenue by about $38 billion over the next four years—so much for tax cuts. They’re tax changes that will lead to an increase in tax for mums and dads. 

Why are politicians scared of tax reform, and why do they place the burden on families and individuals to pay tax and let multinationals off the hook? Why are politicians scared of tax reform, but they continue tinkering with the system to affect mums and dads, who end up by paying, by far, the lion’s share of tax in this country? Why did Senator Sharma, in a very good speech, say that he wants to end bracket creep and the Liberals want end to bracket creep, yet, three weeks earlier, they voted against ending bracket creep with my amendment? They want enduring bracket creep. Why do the Labor Party say they want to end bracket creep—I remember Senator Gallagher said at the time, ‘We want to end bracket creep’—but vote against it? My amendment to abolish bracket creep once and for all was defeated. 

Why is taxation not transparent? I’ll tell you why. It’s so that governments can continue to steal money from families to pay for their uncosted bribes. The Senate and the House of Representatives have turned into auction blocks using taxpayers’ money to buy votes. That’s what they’ve turned into. That’s how the governments of this country work, the uniparty of Labor and the Liberals. Why is the uniparty looking for new ways to tax people? Cars and utes—the foundations for tradies—are now going to be taxed. Clothing is going to be taxed under the Labor Party. Food will be taxed with a new biosecurity levy. Inflation was caused by the Labor and Liberal uniparty during the COVID response—the COVID mismanagement. State premiers were largely Labor, and the federal Prime Minister was Liberal-National. Inflation is a tax, especially on the poor and those with low incomes. Inflation is a huge tax burden. Greenwashing requires corporations to buy carbon dioxide credits. How do they pass the costs on? They pass them on in the form of higher prices. 

Why do they require diversity, equity and inclusion and ESG reporting, which are ridiculous and unfounded? No-one has provided the evidence for that policy. It’s a compliance tax. Where will the cost of that compliance tax go? Onto the things that mums and dads and families pay for. Whole departments have been created in corporations, and that adds to the prices families have to pay. Why more tinkering? Why more complexity and less productivity? Think about the behaviours this drives with regard to allocation of resources and the behaviour of executives and decision-makers. Why is it that every problem in this country comes out of this building, like housing and excessive immigration, which is putting inhuman catastrophic pressures on people now? People are living in tents, cars, caravans, out in the street and under bridges in Brisbane in one of the richest states in the world. This is happening in our regional cities right up and down the east coast of Queensland. It’s a long coast. The Murray-Darling Basin is a disaster. It’s climate fraud, a lie and a scam. It’s a hoax. Stealing farmers’ property rights—the Liberal-National government did that from 1997 to 2007. 

We’re still living with COVID mismanagement. I had a gentleman in my office today who is vaccine injured. It’s been stated by doctors We had to turn the lights off because of the glare. He couldn’t look straight at the windows. He had to look down. This was a vibrant healthy person now with COVID vaccine damage. He’s almost incapacitated. This was a lively human being now pulled up. 

We’re still living with the COVID mismanagement. There’s inflation from the money supply, as I mentioned. There’s inflation from crippling the supply chains during the COVID restrictions. Crippling our supply chains led to higher prices. 

Senator Bilyk: President, I raise a point of order on relevance. We’re here to speak about the Treasury Law Amendment (Making Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share—Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2023. Not once has the senator mentioned anything to do with that bill, and it’s been five minutes. I’m just wondering if you could draw to the attention— 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Polley): Thank you, Senator Bilyk. I will remind Senator Roberts of the topic, but as you and other senators know, it’s a broad-ranging debate. 

Senator ROBERTS: For those senators with poor hearing, let me say again: we support this bill. That’s what I opened with. We support this bill—I’ll repeat it. I said that. 

I’ve just laid down a litany of problems that are coming from this building in betrayal of the people in this country, my fellow Australians. I’m now getting to the point of that betrayal. The most destructive system in government under the uniparty for the last 70 years has been the taxation system. It focuses our brightest and best people, some of our lawyers and accountants, not on serving our country in competition with foreign companies overseas—the Koreans, the Japanese, the Taiwanese, the Chinese, the Europeans and the Americans—but on screwing the government and getting away from complex, ridiculous taxation systems. They’re focused not on competing with foreign owned corporations but on competing with our government. Think of the behaviours that are driven at the corporate level, the allocation of resources, the inefficiency of resources and the behaviour of executives. 

Taxation is highly complex. How many pages are there in our taxation act? It’s highly inefficient directly in terms of allocation of resources and indirectly in terms of the behaviours that are driven. It’s directly inefficient in terms of the way taxation is levied in this country. James Killaly was a former deputy commissioner of taxation in charge of large companies and foreign matters. He said in 1996 and 2010, ‘Ninety per cent of Australia’s large companies are foreign owned and, since 1953, have paid little or no tax.’ This bill does go a little way towards addressing that, but we need to address it full on. 

Why does that happen? Why are foreign companies getting let off the hook? I’ll tell you why. It’s because many of even our large Australian companies are part-owned and controlled by foreign corporations. The major predators are Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street and First State. They own 10 per cent of the four banks combined and they own the controlling interest. They tell the banks what to do—BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard, First State and others in that little cohort of multinational predatory organisations. We don’t have four main banks. We have one main bank that is hiding behind four logos. That’s what we have. They have the same policies, principles, strategies, products and services. 

Coles and Woolies, again, are part-owned by BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard. If you go right through our corporations in this country, the corporations we thought were Australian owned, they’re foreign owned and controlled, and where does the money go? The profit goes overseas. What did the Morrison government do, along with the state premiers? They loaded it up so that foreign multinationals that own the large companies in this country made a killing out of COVID at the expense of small companies and small businesses. 

On the other hand, look at Qatar and Norway. They have bountiful natural resources, just like us—not as much as we have, in fact, and yet they make so much more. Qatar made $78 billion out of its gas exports. We export more and we made a tiny fraction of that, around one per cent of that. 

So why are we doing this? What I’m saying and have been saying for many years, ever since I got into the Senate, is that we need comprehensive, proper and honest tax reform. Let’s have a look at the person who introduced GST into this country. Paul Keating was the Treasurer and, I think, Deputy Prime Minister under Bob Hawke. He came so close to introducing the GST, and, at the last minute, the Prime Minister at the time, Bob Hawke, fell over and lacked the courage to do so. Paul Keating was very upset with that. A few years later, John Hewson introduced the GST as part of Liberal Party policy, and who smashed him over it? Paul Keating, the man who introduced the concept of GST to this country. 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Polley): Senator Roberts, I will remind you to use people’s correct titles when referring to former prime ministers. 

Senator ROBERTS: He was the Treasurer at the time. What I’m saying is that the taxation system was mooted for change, and the person who introduced the GST actually smashed the GST, for purely political reasons. 

On another aspect of comprehensive tax reform, Treasurer Peter Costello—who has been admired as a Treasurer—found out that Senator Pauline Hanson, who at the time was a member of the lower house, was keen on the transaction tax. As a way of trying to destroy her, he destroyed the transaction tax, even though he had previously said publicly that it had a lot of merit. 

The point I’m getting to is: taxation has become a political football. It’s not an honest debate anymore; it’s about smashing a system. So what I propose is that, instead of proposing a system, we should look at basic principles. We should first of all agree that the taxation system is one of the most destructive systems in this country, if not the most destructive, which is my opinion of it. Once we get agreement on that, we should then put forward a set of principles that we can agree on.  

I’ve been putting some thought to principles. First of all, a fair, efficient and honest taxation system would enable us to receive far more income because the multinationals would be paying their fair share of tax. It should be fair and equitable to all people and to all economic entities, including Australian businesses, and with no exemptions for foreign companies, which are now largely exempt. Making foreign companies and speculators pay their fair share of tax would quickly end the budget deficit and overseas debt and fund future infrastructure without borrowing. The second principle: it should be in the national interest.  

The third principle—and this is very, very important for a country, and the reason why I went through the problems that are coming from this building: it should be incorruptible and impossible for politicians to fiddle with. A major source of political power is the ability of politicians to make legislation that punishes or advantages particular groups. This ability gives politicians from the uniparty enormous power over others because they can enact, for example, taxation provisions that assist their supporters or hurt their supporters’ competitors. An honest tax system removes this blatant abuse of power. 

The fourth principle: it should comply with and support our Constitution’s intent and written provisions—not contradict our Constitution but comply with it. The fifth principle: there should be simplicity in understanding, administration and accountability. It should be completely transparent, unlike the current taxation system, which is deliberately opaque. There should be an objective basis for levying tax. Instead of assessing tax on profit and loss that can be fiddled, use objective measures. These do exist and include, for example, market sale price or straight-out unit cost. 

The taxation system needs to be constructive, not punitive. It needs to be efficient to administer, with low administration costs, not the unwieldy behemoth that is administering, or mismanaging, tax at the moment. It should increase people’s purchasing power. A good taxation system, an efficient taxation system, will increase people’s purchasing power so people are economically far better off, because the burden will be shifted more towards multinationals. 

The next principle is: there should be minimal disruption to the economy, with no ability for politicians to manipulate the tax system across industry sectors or industry groups. The taxation system could be a wonderful way of getting aggregate economic data and detailed data. 

The next principle is arguably one of the most important: accountability. When properly designed, a tax system develops accountability in the government and in the people, through being a restraint on the cost of government. Taxes are necessary to pay for the cost of government, but what happens at the moment, because politicians from the uniparty can ratchet taxation up freely, is that they tend to abuse it and neglect their accountability to the people for managing costs. Politicians will have to manage within the country’s means. The next principle is: it should help people to become independent of government.  

What I want to do in wrapping up is say, again, to the senators who didn’t hear me in my opening comments: we support this bill. But it is far too little. Why is it too little? We have got plenty of money in this country for investment. We have got super funds holding enormous sacks of gold, from rivers of gold. I’m asking the government to change your ways. Put families before large, foreign multinationals—Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard, First State. Put national interest before large, foreign multinationals. Reclaim our national sovereignty, and put it before large, foreign multinationals. Put Australia and Australians first. 

I asked this question at the start: why? I ask this question now: why not? 

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