Page 1396 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 1 May 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The third was:
... only commonsense that people who currently have acres of the stuff in their roof have priority over people who have already had 99 per cent of it removed.
Which, if any, of these statements is correct? Why has the Minister made a number of false and misleading statements on this matter?
MR DUBY: I thank Mrs Grassby for the question. Mr Speaker, there is nothing inconsistent in those statements whatsoever. The situation is that when this Government took the reins of office we had an absolute shambles in place in regard to the asbestos removal program with which the Labor Government had lumbered the ACT taxpayer. It had no intention, I am sure, of ever having a day-to-day program set aside to remove the scourge of asbestos from the place within a reasonable time.
Mr Speaker, the final statement to which Mrs Grassby referred was made when I announced, on behalf of the Government, a comprehensive program to remove asbestos from the homes of ACT citizens over a specified period of four years, giving a timetable to which people could adhere. I said that those people who had asbestos in large quantities in their roofs would naturally be entitled to expect to have the substance removed at the same rate as, if not ahead of, those folk who had already, by their own volition, had a cleaning job done on their properties and were left with perhaps 1 per cent or 2 per cent of asbestos fibres in their roofs.
Mrs Grassby is quoting from today's newspaper article which refers to the Government's program of asbestos removal and in particular to the Government's program and timetable for the removal of the remaining asbestos from those homes which have already had an unsatisfactory cleaning job done. Mr Speaker, I am very concerned about those press reports that were in the paper today because they may cause unnecessary worry for those unfortunate Canberrans with asbestos in their homes - something which it would appear was never in the minds of members of the previous Government.
This Government is firmly committed to completing domestic asbestos removal within four years, and we made that commitment within a short time of taking the reins of office, something which we could not get out of the previous Minister, something to which the previous Government was not committed at all. We have acted promptly in dealing with the mess that we inherited from the Commonwealth and the previous Government. When we came to office, Mr Speaker, we found the key decisions which could have been made - - -
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .