NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns has rightly dropped the controversial emergency services levy on home owners’ insurance premiums in the state, the only one to pay for its firefighters and ambulances with such a hypothecated tax.

It adds 18 per cent to the cost of home insurance, with the result that almost one in five of home owners are taking the risky choice of going uninsured, and leaving more prudent households, along with the state government, bearing the cost of an increasingly fire- and flood-prone NSW.