STAND AGAINST INSURANCE ABUSE (SAIA)

The National Committee for Human Rights and Policyholder Reform

OFFICIAL LEGISLATIVE MANIFESTO AND CALL TO ACTION

Presented to the Parliament of Australia, State Parliaments, Regulatory Bodies, and the Australian Public.

THE HIDDEN HOUSING CRISIS: A CALL TO END NORMALISED CORPORATE ABUSE

Australia is facing a silent, catastrophic housing crisis that has nothing to do with market supply and everything to do with corporate malice. Millions of Australians pay their premiums every year under the sacred promise that their sanctuary and most prized asset will be protected. Instead, when disaster strikes, they are systematically crushed by a predatory system. Behind polished corporate slogans lies a murky web of deceit designed to build policyholders up with false promises, only to tear them down through calculated manipulations of power.

There is no longer any doubt: the Australian housing safety net is broken.

We have allowed a national disgrace to become normalised. When an insurer deploys toxic delay tactics, sends unqualified trades who cut corners with non-compliant repairs, engages panel experts who are coached and biased, or uses manufactured reports to deny coverage, the public response has become: "That is just what they do."

We say: No more.

This is not administrative friction, nor is it simply corporations trying to do more with less. This is institutional, calculated abuse. Millions of policyholders are being systematically gaslit, financially drained, and psychologically broken by multi-billion-dollar insurance corporations. Legitimate claims are rejected on manufactured loopholes and ambiguous policy exclusions that everyday Australians are intimidated out of questioning. Homes are intentionally left to rot into toxic biohazards while families are forced into caravans, temporary shelters, and long-term homelessness. Meanwhile, insurance executives pocket multi-million-dollar bonus packages for hitting profit targets built directly on human suffering.

THE UNCHECKED HUMAN IMPACT

Australia rightfully stands against domestic violence, institutional bullying, and coercive control, yet we turn a blind eye to corporate abuse that inflicts the exact same psychological trauma. Corporate psychological abuse has become a protected, profit-driven exception, fueled by a normalised "deny, delay, defend" playbook built solely for corporate gain. These operational tactics deployed by insurers directly trigger Complex PTSD, severe clinical depression, and acute suicidal ideation by destroying a family's sanctuary when they are at their most vulnerable.

The current system operates completely detached from basic morality, with zero penalties, zero public accountability, and zero consequences. Executives face no performance scorecard gates, no board discretion penalties, and no clawbacks despite skyrocketing complaints of bad-faith claims handling. Corporate self-regulation has failed entirely. The General Insurance Code of Practice lacks binding legal teeth, leaving regulators powerless to enforce meaningful sanctions.

Stand Against Insurance Abuse (SAIA) demands immediate, uncompromising statutory and legislative reforms to strip these entities of their unchecked power and declare that safe housing, health, and human dignity are non-negotiable human rights.

THE 6 PILLARS OF LEGISLATIVE REFORM

PILLAR 1: Heavy Sanctions for Dark Triad Playbooks and Corporate Psychological Abuse

• Sanctions for Abusive Operational Tactics: Introduce explicit statutory definitions and civil penalties targeting corporate Narcissistic, Machiavellian, and Psychopathic behavioural tactics specifically designed to delay, deny, and distort the truth of a claim, and to exhaust, intimidate, isolate, and force desperate policyholders into surrendering their rights.

• Legal Classification of Corporate Psychological Abuse: Codify corporate gaslighting, weaponised financial control, engineered administrative roadblocks, and deliberate psychological warfare as statutory offences within Consumer Law and the Corporations Act.

• Criminalising Deliberate Attrition: Penalise intentional communications blackouts, unresponded emails (such as leaving dozens of urgent policyholder communications unanswered), and the constant rotating of case managers designed to force traumatised victims to endlessly repeat their trauma.

• Direct Penalties for Statutory Duty Violations: Amend Section 13 of the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 to attach severe statutory financial penalties for breaches of the Duty of Utmost Good Faith during the claims handling process.

• Sanctions for Non-Cooperation with AFCA and ECR Teams: Introduce direct financial penalties and statutory fines for Executive Complaints Relations (ECR) teams that fail to respond to AFCA communications, ignore policyholder settlement negotiations, or deliberately stall the dispute resolution process.

PILLAR 2: Corporate Sanctions, Executive Accountability, and Strict Vicarious Liability

• Severe Corporate Financial Penalties: Empower ASIC and AFCA to issue direct, multi-million-dollar punitive fines against publicly listed insurers for bad-faith conduct, deliberate claim manipulation, and unconscionable delay tactics.

• Statutory Clawback of Executive Remuneration: Mandate the expansion of the Financial Accountability Regime (FAR) to force mandatory forfeiture and clawback of executive bonus packages (including Group CEOs and Chief Executives of Consumer Insurance) whenever an insurer engages in systemic code violations, unconscionable claim delays, or excessive AFCA dispute escalations. Executive remuneration must be legally bound to customer safety and statutory compliance.

• Strict Statutory Vicarious Liability: Legislate strict statutory vicarious liability, removing the ability of insurers to deflect fault onto third-party trades. Insurers must be held 100 percent legally and financially responsible for secondary structural destruction, mould cross-contamination, and safety breaches caused by their appointed contractors.

• Abolition of the Deflection Loophole: Prohibit insurers from using procedural stonewalling to force desperate policyholders into a 12-month AFCA or court dispute as a strategy of financial and psychological exhaustion.

PILLAR 3: Workforce Compliance and Building Code Adherence

• Abolition of Unqualified "Make-Safe" Workforces: Ban the deployment of unlicensed, unregistered contractors or handymen for critical disaster make-safe and remediation work. Every individual operating on an insured property must hold accredited, regulated trade credentials.

• Mandatory Building Code and WorkSafe Enforcement: Strip away informal regulatory exemptions. Require all insurance-directed workstreams to strictly comply with state building authority regulations, WorkSafe standards, and the National Construction Code.

• Independent Auditing of Remediation Standards: Mandate independent third-party clearances for mould remediation and structural dried-in standards before a claim can be formally signed off or closed by an insurer.

PILLAR 4: Elimination of Biased "Panel Expert" Reports

• Banning Insurer-Coached Expert Panels: Prohibit the use of internal, panel-coached engineers, assessors, and hygienists hired specifically to minimise payout obligations and manufacture pre-planned defence arguments.

• Independent Statutory Expert Pool: Require all structural, meteorological, hydrological, and environmental property assessments to be drawn from an independent, court-certified statutory pool of accredited experts with zero financial or contractual ties to insurance companies.

• Banning Unsubstantiated Policy Exclusion Loopholes: Eliminate reliance on vague exclusions such as "gradual deterioration", "wear and tear", or "design defect" unless the insurer provides conclusive, independent empirical evidence proving the exclusion directly caused the loss.

• Prosecution of Manufactured Defence Reports: Introduce licence cancellations and civil or criminal penalties for engineering firms, hydrologists, and assessors that manufacture false claims of pre-existing maintenance neglect to crush legitimate policyholder claims.

PILLAR 5: Enforceable Statutory Time Limits and Public Transparency

• Strict Binding Claim Timelines: Legislate strict, mandatory time limits for storm, flood, water, and fire damage claims (compulsory claim determination and execution of works within a maximum of 30 to 60 days). Eliminate the practice of allowing claims to drag on for years while homes rot into biohazards and policyholders are rendered homeless and financially destitute.

• Enforceable Code Governance: Transform the General Insurance Code of Practice into a legally binding statutory instrument, empowering ASIC to issue direct fines for code breaches.

• Public Complaints and Violations Register: Establish a central, publicly accessible statutory register managed by regulators, detailing every insurer that violates the General Insurance Code of Practice, including exact breach descriptions, customer complaint numbers, and fines levied.

• Mandatory Disclosure of Fines and Code Breaches: Force insurance companies to prominently publish their annual customer complaint figures, code violations, AFCA dispute volumes, and total regulatory penalties on their public homepages and annual reports.

PILLAR 6: Industry Benchmark Pricing, Open Price Books, and Quality Warranties

• Implementation of an Open Price Book Benchmark: Mandate the implementation of an open, transparent price book benchmark for industry-standard rates covering all home repairs, rebuilding, and restoration works, established independently of insurer influence.

• Prohibition of Low-Ball Panel Quotations: Ban artificial, low-ball panel builder quotes that sit far below real market rates, stopping insurers using depressed internal estimates to force inadequate cash settlements or lock policyholders into drawn-out repairs with substandard trades.

• Protections on Cash Settlements: Legislate that cash settlement offers must equal the true, independent market cost to repair the property, including all professional fees, permits, and contingencies, without deducting insurer trade discounts.

• Mandatory Transparency of Unredacted Price Books: Legislate that all price books, builder scopes, and repair costings held by the insurer must be disclosed to the policyholder in full without redactions upon request.

• Mandatory Repair Warranties: Legislate that all repairs carried out by an insurance panel builder must carry a mandatory, legally enforceable statutory warranty that fully complies with state building codes and safety regulations.

CONCLUSION AND DEMAND FOR ACCOUNTABILITY

We have tolerated corporate malice under the guise of "business as usual" for far too long. Every day our lawmakers turn a blind eye, they become complicit in the destruction of Australian homes and Australian lives.

The nightmare ends here. We call upon state and federal parliamentarians to sponsor and enact the SAIA Legislative Reform Package. It is time to hold corporate predators criminally and financially accountable, restore enforcement to our regulators, and protect the fundamental human right to a safe, secure home.

Stand Against Insurance Abuse (SAIA)

The National Committee for Human Rights and Policyholder Reform

Written by Fleur Elizabeth, Founder and Policyholder Advocate