Page 2657 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 1993
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Mr De Domenico: Less than what - - -
MR CORNWELL: Correct; less than the $150. They also offered a simple battery unit for $50 each installation, with a maintenance of $10 per unit, including battery replacement. Mr Doyle has subsequently followed that up and said that he would be very happy to take the contract on that basis, and if he did so his company would need to employ an extra two people. They would take two unemployed people and with three days' training they would have them installing the battery-type detectors. These two extra jobs created in this way would be permanent. I will give the Minister this information at the end of this debate. He may like to pursue it with Mr Doyle of Doyle's Electrical Services. The point is that there is no reason why the $12 batteries cannot be installed in Housing Trust properties.
Mr De Domenico: You could probably buy them a lot cheaper if you got them in bulk, too.
MR CORNWELL: I was coming to that, Mr De Domenico. Whilst I can understand the logistical difficulties of installing smoke detectors even at $12 a unit in the Housing Trust's 12,300 properties simultaneously, I have in my motion suggested an alternative; that is, that in the new Housing Trust properties they be installed immediately and in existing stock they be installed as the maintenance comes around. I am not playing politics on this. I think that this is a sensible motion.
Ms Follett: Ha, ha!
MR CORNWELL: The Chief Minister might laugh, but if her house burns down she might have welcomed the fact that she had a smoke detector there. The other point, of course, is that we can only hope that the smoke detectors will minimise damage to property.
Mr Connolly: Saving a few public tenants' lives would be nice, too, rather than minimising property, but it is good to see the order of priorities from the Liberals.
MR CORNWELL: Thank you, Mr Connolly, for your interjection, because I accept it. I pick that up. The really important point is that we may save lives by having them there. In answer to Mr Wood's earlier interjection I indicated that we do have a smoke detector at home, one of these $12 efforts, and I can assure you that they are very efficient. They emit a most piercing noise that you would have great difficulty in ignoring. That, of course, is the whole purpose and point of them. Therefore, I would suggest that even a $12 smoke detector would be better than not having one at all.
Significantly, if we are looking at cost, it is interesting to consider the $45,000 damage done to the Burnie Court bed-sitter on Monday night. That $45,000 would provide 3,750 $12 smoke detectors, which relates to approximately a quarter of the existing ACT housing stock. So you can see the benefits. I think I said yesterday in one interview that if two government houses were saved from burning down you would have paid for the entire cost of the Housing Trust's $12 smoke detectors, providing that you were buying them at $12. I am sure that if you were looking for a substantial number, like 12,000 units, you would get them a great deal cheaper.
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