Page 1748 - Week 06 - Thursday, 19 May 1994
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I believe that this report has attempted to walk that very fine line between the rights of everybody in the community and the public health aspects of the passive smoking issue. I am sure that everybody in this Assembly believes that everybody has the right to breathe safe air, that is, air that is, as much as is possible, smoke free, just as we have a right to walk outside the door and breathe air that is not heavily polluted - something that I know ACT clean air laws are very much part of and have very much backed up.
This committee report, if it is brought forward into legislation, will make sure that everybody will have a right to breathe air of a quality similar to that outside, and that is the basis of the ventilation standard involved. If that is not achieved, then the legislation simply is not being complied with and, therefore, the person is outside the requirements of the proposed legislation. It will be all right to have smoking either in 50 per cent of the premises, if it happens to be a bar, a casino or a licensed club, or in 25 per cent of the premises if it is a restaurant, only if there is adequate ventilation to the Australian standard, which produces the same quality of air as outside air.
Mr Berry commented about blowing smoke in people's faces. Certainly that is very unpleasant, as are lots of other things, like people who do not use deodorant. There are lots of issues that are equally dangerous to health. A quick blow of smoke in somebody's face simply does not cause cancer. In my view, and certainly not everyone would share this view, what does cause long-term health problems is a significant amount of smoke in the air over a long period. This approach ensures that that does not happen, either for patrons of these establishments or for the workers in them. The recommendations go on to say that, where smoking is allowed in any of these premises, the occupational health and safety requirements must be complied with. There is no doubt that this report is totally in tune with occupational health and safety requirements as they are now and as I understand they will be in the future, with the new requirements that will be brought into this place at some stage in the future.
What we have is a balance between the rights of non-smokers and of smokers - who do have rights, whether we like it or not. A very impressive lobbying exercise has been taken on board, not just in Australia but around the world, to suggest that smokers do not have any rights. I believe that everybody on this planet has rights. What we have done here with this report is ensure that that 30 per cent of the population have rights. Certainly those rights have been restricted by this report. Those people have been restricted to restaurants that perceive that, on an economic base, they should put in these extraction systems. So they cannot just go anywhere, nor should they be able to, because people who do not smoke have rights too. We get back to that question of balance.
I think one of the things that have been forgotten is the ventilation standard. It is not something that has popped out of the air; it has been in existence since 1991. Buildings that have been built to Australian standards during that time will have these ventilation systems in place now. The casino that is being built will have extraction systems to this level in place. Places such as the Hyatt have these extraction systems in place now. There is not a huge extra expense for buildings that have been built or refurbished of recent days. We are talking about an impost on some businesses. That is something the Liberal Party would always look at with a certain amount of scepticism.
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