Standard cover

60 days empty: 4 of 14 events drop, and how to keep them

There is a provision in the Insurance Contracts Regulations 2017 that removes most of your water cover, that almost nobody has read, and that is shorter than this paragraph.

It is reg 19(2)(f), and what it excludes is:

if the home building is unoccupied and has been unoccupied for a continuous period of more than 60 days — destruction or damage occurring otherwise than as mentioned in subparagraph (1)(a)(ii) or (iii) or (vii) to (xiv), or the incurring of liability as mentioned in paragraph (1)(d)

That reads like nothing until you go and look up which subparagraphs it kept.

What survives, and what does not

Reg 19(1)(a) lists fourteen events. Reg 19(2)(f) keeps (ii), (iii), and (vii) through (xiv), and drops the rest. Ten survive; four do not.

The single most common cause of domestic water damage in Australia is subparagraph (vi), and it is in the drops column.

Two other heads of cover go with it

Reg 19(1)(b) — breakage of fixed glass, a fixed shower base, basin, sink, bath, lavatory pan or cistern — is destruction or damage, and it is not one of the subparagraphs reg 19(2)(f) keeps. It drops. So does liability as owner or occupier under reg 19(1)(d), which the provision names expressly.

And one that this site will not tell you about

Reg 19(1)(c) is loss by theft, burglary or housebreaking. Reg 19(2)(f) is drafted about “destruction or damage” and about liability under paragraph (1)(d). Loss under (1)(c) is worded as neither. Whether the vacancy exclusion reaches it is a question of construction that no source read for this page settles, so no answer is given here. If that is your claim, it is worth putting to your insurer in exactly those terms.

Sixty days is not very long

This is the part that catches people, because the situations that produce a 60-day vacancy do not feel like leaving a house empty.

Note the word continuous. Somebody going in once a fortnight to collect the mail is a question of fact about occupancy, and it is not a question you want decided after the ceiling comes down.

Scope and condition are two different arguments

This is the distinction that decides which provision you are actually fighting about, and almost nothing written on this subject draws it.

Why reg 19 bites at all

Standard cover is not a promise your policy makes. It is a floor the Act puts under it. Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) s 35(1) · compilation of 1 March 2024, read 21 September 2026 — This is the provision that makes the reg 19 list mean anything. Where a claim is made under a prescribed contract and the event is a prescribed event, the insurer may not refuse to pay an amount equal to the minimum amount by reason only that the contract gave less cover, or none.

And the escape hatch: Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) s 35(2) · compilation of 1 March 2024, read 21 September 2026 — The carve-out, and it is the whole game. Subsection (1) does not apply where the insurer proves that, before the contract was entered into, it clearly informed the insured in writing — or the insured knew, or a reasonable person in the circumstances could be expected to have known — that the cover would be less, or that there would be none.

So if an insurer told you in writing, before you bought, that vacant-property losses were out, reg 19 will not put them back in. If it did not, that is a question worth asking.

There is also a reading rule that cuts your way. Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) s 36 · compilation of 1 March 2024, read 21 September 2026 — A reading rule, and it runs in the insured’s favour. Where a question arises whether an event is a prescribed event, the relevant provisions of the regulations are to be construed as though they were provisions of a contract put forward by the insurer — which is to say, read against the party that drafted them.

What section 54 does, where it applies

Where the fight is about a policy condition rather than the scope of standard cover, section 54 is the most useful provision in the Act.

Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) s 54(1) · compilation of 1 March 2024, read 21 September 2026 — Where the effect of a contract would be that the insurer may refuse a claim because of some act of the insured or another person after the contract was entered into, the insurer may not refuse by reason only of that act — its liability is instead reduced by the amount that fairly represents the prejudice to its interests.

Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) s 54(6) · compilation of 1 March 2024, read 21 September 2026 — The definition that makes s 54 relevant to an empty house. “Act” in this section includes an omission, and includes an act or omission that has the effect of altering the state or condition of the subject-matter of the contract, or of allowing it to alter.

That subsection is why the section reaches an empty house at all: leaving a property unoccupied is an omission that allows the state or condition of the subject-matter to alter, and the section says so in terms.

Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) s 54(3) · compilation of 1 March 2024, read 21 September 2026 — Where the insured proves that no part of the loss was caused by the act, the insurer may not refuse to pay by reason only of the act. Subsection (4) does the same job for the part of a loss the act did not cause.

Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) s 54(5) · compilation of 1 March 2024, read 21 September 2026 — Where the act was necessary to protect the safety of a person or to preserve property, or it was not reasonably possible not to do it, the insurer may not refuse by reason only of the act.

And what it does not do

Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) s 54(2) · compilation of 1 March 2024, read 21 September 2026 — The limit on the section. Where the act could reasonably be regarded as capable of causing or contributing to a loss of that kind, the insurer may refuse. This is the subsection an insurer relies on, and it is why s 54 is an argument rather than a guarantee.

Be honest with yourself about that one. A burst flexible hose that ran for six weeks because nobody was there to hear it is a loss the vacancy plainly contributed to, and an insurer relying on s 54(2) in that situation is on solid ground. Section 54 is an argument, not a get-out.

What to do about it

Three things, in order of how much they cost.

Tell the insurer, in advance. This is free and it is the whole answer. Most insurers have an unoccupancy provision, a form, or a specific product, and the conversation takes ten minutes. The one thing that does not work is telling them afterwards.

Turn the water off at the meter. Also free. A property with no water pressure cannot produce an escape of water, and a mains tap turned off is the cheapest insurance policy available to anyone leaving a house empty. It is not a substitute for telling the insurer, because a storm will still get in — but it removes the exposure this particular provision creates.

Check whether your policy varies it. Reg 19 sets standard cover, which is a floor. An insurer may sell a policy that covers less, provided it clearly informed you in writing, and it may also sell one that covers more. The fastest way to find out what yours does is the statutory one-page summary your insurer has to publish — see what counts as water damage for how to get it and what it has to contain.

Why it exists

Not as a trap. The reason is actuarial and it is reasonable: an escape of water in an occupied house is discovered in minutes and an escape of water in an empty house is discovered when somebody eventually visits. The same failure produces a claim of a completely different size, and reg 19(2)(f) is the line the regulations drew around that.

Which is also the practical reading. The risk the provision is aimed at is duration. If you can reduce the duration — a neighbour with a key, a water leak sensor, a mains tap turned off — you have addressed the thing the provision exists for, whether or not you have addressed the provision.

If it has already happened

If a claim has been declined on this basis, four things are worth establishing before you accept it.

Was it actually continuous, and actually more than 60 days? These are questions of fact and the burden of establishing an exclusion sits with the insurer. Dates matter.

Which subparagraph does the insurer say applies to your loss? If the water came in through a storm-damaged roof, that is subparagraph (xiv), which reg 19(2)(f) keeps — the vacancy exclusion does not reach it at all. The table at the top of this page is the whole argument.

Ask for the reports. General Insurance Code of Practice, paragraph 82 · 2020 Code, October 2023 update, read 20 September 2026 entitles you to the information and the external expert reports the insurer relied on, within 10 business days of asking. In a vacancy decline the file usually contains somebody’s assessment of when the property was last occupied, and that assessment is frequently based on less than you would expect.

Remember the duty runs both ways. Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) s 13(1) · compilation of 1 March 2024, read 21 September 2026 — Every contract of insurance implies a provision requiring each party to act towards the other, in any matter arising under or in relation to it, with the utmost good faith. An insurer that fails to comply contravenes s 13(2A), which carries a civil penalty of 5,000 penalty units. And Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) s 14(1), (3) · compilation of 1 March 2024, read 21 September 2026 — If reliance by a party on a provision of the contract would be to fail to act with the utmost good faith, that party may not rely on it. In deciding that question a court is to have regard to any notification of the provision given to the insured.

Then, if it does not resolve, AFCA — which is free to the consumer, which the Code obliges general insurers to belong to, and whose determinations bind the insurer. AFCA, how we resolve complaints · read 20 September 2026

Where this sits

The covered and not covered page has this as one row among eighteen; it deserved its own. If you are not sure which provision your situation falls under, the cover check walks six questions and names it, and what counts as water damage translates the words on your policy into the words in the regulation. If the building is wet right now, the first 48 hours is the more urgent page, and what the drying costs is the arithmetic that tells you whether claiming is worth the excess at all.

All notes · Does insurance cover it · What it costs