Flushed with success from the rout of plaintiff lawyers over tort reform, are Australia’s general insurers now attempting to overturn the consumer protection provisions of the Insurance Contracts Act? The Australian Consumers Association thinks so, and it has some confidential ICA documents that appear – at first sight – to confirm its assertions.

The documents, which have been obtained by Sunrise Exchange News, are a June 26 circular to ICA’s “controlling officers” – member companies’ delegates to ICA – and pages from ICA’s issues register, which were updated on August 26. (The register is a weighty document used to keep track of progress on the matters ICA handles.)

In a media release on Sunday, ACA claimed the documents show the industry is planning to cut consumer protection “by seeking repeal of chunks of legislation controlling everyday insurance policies”.

ACA accused ICA of bad faith in taking the measures to Senator Ian Campbell, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, without consulting them. ACA Finance Policy Officer Catherine Wolthuizen said the insurers didn’t use the joint Consumer Consultative Committee to raise the issue. “The [documents] have been developed in secret and taken to Government without any consultation,” she said.

No doubt about it, the documents are about changing the duty of disclosure provisions of the Insurance Contracts Act, as well as standard covers, residential property average clauses, fraudulent claims and the expiry, renewal and cancellation of insurance contracts.

The trouble with leaked documents is that the excitement of the leaking often raises the importance of the documents above their true value. In this case, says ICA Corporate Affairs Executive Manager Rod Frail, there’s not much to get so heated about.

“The Insurance Contracts Act is 18 years old and we are looking at provisions that are also covered by the Financial Services Reform Act. The old Act has been left behind, and in parts it’s in conflict with the FSRA.”

For example? “The Insurance Contracts Act doesn’t take account of telesales, email and fax, even though they’re a standard part of the business today. The FSRA is much more up to date.”

Some of the points raised in the issues register document could be seen as controversial, but most are obvious statements for debate by a working party that starts next week. For example, one discussion point says a review isn’t needed, others say there is a case for repealing the Act.

Did ICA talk to Senator Campbell? Mr Frail said the issue was raised in a meeting with him, “but we’re a very long way from making any submissions to the Government. Senator Campbell said – and we have no hassles with this – that there would never be any rollback of consumer protection provisions.”