Page 1438 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 26 September 1989
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does acknowledge that major industrial unrest was averted as recently as June this year with respect to the removal of asbestos fibre from an air-conditioning tunnel near one of the hospital's boiler rooms. The Minister says that industrial action was averted because the occupational health and safety record was already up and running, and that is good and I applaud that. I note that the dispute I referred to earlier this year in January, the ninety-fifth dispute of such a kind in a two-year period, was in fact over occupational health and safety over the membership of one of the committees being established under that plan. I certainly hope that that accord does not give rise to any more disputes, but rather acts as a settler of such disputes.
The Liberals welcome advances in industrial relations in the health system. We will be keeping a careful eye on the operation of this accord to ensure that it achieves what the Minister says it does. I do urge those involved in the health area to think of self-government as a way of making a new start. We must put behind us the bad industrial situation of the past and try to achieve some communication, some smooth working of the system, to avoid disputes of the kind that have arisen in the past. I certainly look forward to a much better industrial relations record in the health area.
MR WOOD (4.35): I will reserve more detailed comments on the proposed Bill until the time when the Bill comes before the house. I make a general comment about the way in which the report was modified. Most of the members of this house will know the importance that was given to the Bill and will know that in the discussions before the Bill was prepared there was already quite a deal of compromise or modification to the Bill to suit the wishes of people in the community. Thus, when the Bill was prepared it had already been considerably diminished. I was sorry, therefore - and I said this at the time when the report came to the house - that there had been further modifications in the interests, it was claimed, of balance and consensus. So the message, I suppose, to those preparing a Bill is to start at one extreme of the spectrum expecting modification. I think the Bill was already a modified, watered down document that did not need any more of that treatment.
My main purpose in rising today is to talk about the issue of smoking. It is a simple issue: smoking is damaging to our health. But the Bill gives little account to that, and our committee when it looked at occupational health gave no account to it. Though it is a simple issue, there are fairly complex outcomes if we are to deal with it. In due course we will have to come to the question of dealing with smoking in the workplace if we are to consider adequately the interests of our residents, the interests of the employees of the ACT Government, and finally, and of much less importance but nevertheless significant, the matter of revenue.
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