Page 6065 - Week 18 - Thursday, 12 December 1991
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MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (5.09): Let me come back to this matter too, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker. We are dealing with substances, CFCs, that are mostly acknowledged - not entirely in this Assembly - as being very detrimental to our environment; substances that we have to take the greatest care with. I have no anxiety at all in saying that, if a person has demonstrated some gross irresponsibility, the detail of which we cannot incorporate into our legislation, that person should be refused a licence. A person can show gross irresponsibility, and, in view of the significance of CFCs, we ought to be able to take account of that.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (5.10): Now that Mr Wood has fired both his barrels, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I will say that I do agree with Mr Humphries on this matter. As Mr Humphries has already outlined, the reasonable determinants of whether or not a person ought to get a licence are stated in the legislation. I think we can reduce it to the basic level of somebody who services refrigerators for a living. Under this law, he is going to have to get a licence. If he is qualified, technically, I can think of no reason why he would not be given a licence. The Minister has not thought of one either; otherwise he would have mentioned it.
He talked about gross irresponsibility. What does that mean - that he forgets to fill in a bit of his application form or something? How do you know that a person is guilty of gross irresponsibility? Does the public servant issuing the licence have a dossier on all potential applicants that he runs through to see not only whether this person is qualified technically, but also whether he has committed an act of gross irresponsibility?
Mr Stevenson: Voting against Labor.
MR KAINE: It could be that he just overlooked re-registering his Valiant motor car. Would that exclude him from getting a refrigeration mechanic's licence?
Mr Stevenson: I actually do not think that has ever happened in this Assembly. It was a different story entirely.
MR KAINE: That was just a thing that I thought of. But Mr Humphries is right. The Minister says that there might be many reasons why one would not want to say that a person cannot have a licence. Let us have some of them on the table. What are they? If the person is technically qualified, presumably he is entitled to a licence. He may even be a convicted felon, but is that going to exclude him from fixing refrigerators?
Mr Wood: No, absolutely not.
Mr Stevenson: He might be an ex-politician.
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