ICA has announced a pooled insurance scheme by insurers as a short-term solution to the public liability crisis. The plan offers a temporary lifeline to possibly thousands of community groups which have been struggling to pay premiums. But the pool would only apply to not-for-profit organisations.

Four insurers are involved: Allianz, Royal & SunAlliance, QBE and Liberty Mutual. The insurers would run the pool with a cap on premium increases of 50%. The pool would provide cover of up to $20 million for an organisation, with a minimum premium of $1000.

The insurers and the ICA want the state and territory governments to underwrite the claims. They also want assurances that all community groups will participate in the scheme. “This concept will not work if the worst risks are the only groups who join,” ICA Executive Director Alan Mason said. “That is why we need governments to ensure that all eligible community organisations participate.”

But there’s still one other thing standing in the way of this scheme going ahead: it needs the ACCC’s approval. If all parties agree on the specifics of the pooled scheme, the ACCC could grant authorisation within the next three months.

As far as government responses about the proposed pool go, they are different across the states. The NSW Government has rejected the call for state governments to underwrite the underwriters. The SA Government wants to discuss the idea, and Victoria, which has already created its own pool to cover 12,000 community groups, isn’t exactly heaping praise on the idea. Victorian Finance Minister John Lenders said the scheme “sounds like the old trap of privatising profits and socialising losses”.