What about your provider of home insurance – how do they compare with others?

And if the NDIS is currently something that you are wrestling with, are you feeling empowered or overwhelmed, or maybe both?

And is there anyone out there who could explain to me the difference between one private health insurance provider, and another?

The ability for us as consumer to have choice is often called a “democratic right” by many and a “liberty” or “freedom” by others.

But the flip side of this choice is the challenge of being able to make good, well informed choices.

To make the best possible choices you need to become something of an expert in reading complicated documents, understanding in great detail the issue of finance and having clear and specific goals about your own personal needs.

And even then, you can never be quite sure if you have asked all of the right questions, found all of the right details and been provided with all of the right information. Good luck.

In recent years we have seen the most atrocious scams being rolled out to fool people into signing up for “training courses” to get a qualification, only to find themselves in debt with no training and no qualification.

We are already seeing equally concerning signs on the NDIS front – with some particular dodgy companies taking a big slice of the funding meant for some of our disabled people.

In some of the recent floods across the country we have seen some of the insurance companies refusing to pay out, because of the fine print.

I firmly believe that Government have an incredibly important role to play to set minimum standards.

I have no problem with the private sector doing better than the Government, and in some cases they do, but in too many instances we have allowed the privateers to do worse, at the taxpayer’s expense.