Page 3931 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 December 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
by our proportionate and risk-based approach to compliance activities to date. Through direct engagement with businesses and community groups, ACT government compliance agencies have been able to develop a shared understanding of the restrictions and build strong stakeholder relationships.
The recent lockdown provided an opportunity for compliance agencies to consider options for a more streamlined regulation. We heard from them that as the community moves to a more COVID-normal stance with less daily focus on public health directions, the changes being implemented through this bill become more important to ensure that various compliance agencies can continue to do their work to protect us all. This becomes particularly important for continuing to protect the community from incursions as we ease restrictions and there is more travel across borders domestically and internationally.
The government has listened to our compliance agencies and developed this bill, which will give agencies on the ground appropriate tools to support the public health response to COVID-19. These agencies, it is important to note, will continue also to be guided by their detailed compliance policies, the chief amongst these being the publicly available compliance, engagement and enforcement framework, which ensures that the ACT government’s regulatory approach to the COVID-19 public health emergency directions aligns with existing regulatory principles and practices across government. Specifically, the framework uses the engage, educate, enforce regulatory model, which emphasises working with businesses and the community to achieve voluntary compliance where possible.
The collaborative efforts of the ACT government compliance agencies and ACT Policing have seen strong support and cooperation from the whole community, including the business community. With this bill, our compliance agencies will be further supported to continue their work, even in the event of increased COVID-19 cases. I want to take the opportunity to thank ACT Policing and all of the ACT government compliance agencies that have been engaged in this work, including Access Canberra, the Health Protection Service and WorkSafe ACT, who have worked collaboratively to ensure that our compliance stance really encourages that voluntary engagement that I have been talking about.
Mr Assistant Speaker Davis, as you noted, the limitations on rights made by the bill are necessary and reasonable in a free and democratic society and go no further than necessary to achieve the required public health outcomes. As an added protection, the proposed changes expire 12 months after the repeal of the COVID-19 emergency declaration.
As the ACT and other parts of Australia open up to the rest of the world, we must be prepared to continue to respond to the public health risks of COVID-19. This bill seeks to help protect the ACT community by making necessary technical improvements to further support our COVID-19 public health response, and it does this whilst protecting community values and promoting regulatory transparency.
I thank all members in this place for their consideration of this bill and for their support of it today. I look forward to having more to say about future approaches
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video