Page 3143 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 September 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
But that is not necessarily the case in bars or clubs or in the poker machine rooms of the various clubs around town. It is in those circumstances that people tend to chain-smoke, to smoke all the time, and there is no capacity for people to avoid that passive smoke. So, if we are looking at harm minimisation, the areas that we should be aiming at are the areas where there is a capacity to have high levels of exposure over a long period of time. That is what all the scientific evidence shows us. So, from this side of the Assembly, we are approaching the Bill and this important issue as a harm minimisation issue. We should be passing legislation to ensure that those people who do not smoke have the harm to them that is associated with passive smoking minimised. That is the approach that Michael Moore is taking with this amendment and the approach that the committee took when recommending it.
MR MOORE (8.19): Madam Speaker, I would like to clarify something. Ms Ellis's comments were about being positive and constructive. In fact, the reason why I raised that argument before was to demonstrate that we could run a negative and destructive style of debate, which is what Mr Berry has been doing the whole time. I raised that issue purely to demonstrate that we could run a negative and destructive kind of debate if we so wished. It is not my wish to do that. It is my wish to run a sensible and constructive debate, as, I would like to point out to the Assembly, Ms Ellis did within the committee and as always happens on every committee on which I serve with Ms Ellis. I would like to assure members that I made no implication about anything else in the way that Ms Ellis operates. It was simply a matter of raising the way in which the debate could operate.
I would like to add something else. Ms Ellis raised the issue that we have an opportunity to do something about smoking when we have fertile ground. This evening I will be presenting amendments on behalf of the committee. I predict that something like 90 per cent of restaurants will become smoke free because they will not be able to reach the high standards set in a couple of years. So, not only will it mean that 90 per cent of restaurants will become smoke free; but it will also mean that we will begin to enter the areas which need targeting most. That is what the original Bill failed to do. It failed to get into those areas that we need to target most, the areas that were most fertile for change - not because the change had already occurred, and we are already doing that, but because that was where the need was greatest. That is why the committee came up with these ideas and that is why these amendments are so much more effective and will improve the Bill significantly. That is what they are intended to do, and I believe that that is what they will do.
MR BERRY (Manager of Government Business) (8.22): Certainly Mr Moore and Ms Szuty, it appears, and the Leader of the Opposition deserve the Sir Walter Raleigh award for promoting the consumption of tobacco. What Mr Moore, with his typical arrogance, failed to recognise was the Government's approach to this very important issue. At the outset, it was made clear to the community that the Government intended to take the community with it; that is to say that, after a period of consultation with the community, there would be a full understanding of the issues which affected business in the ACT. It is very clear that the restaurant industry was the most appropriate place to start with a prohibition of tobacco consumption, because that was something that the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .