Page 3148 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 September 1994
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (8.38): Madam Speaker, Mr Stevenson has been watching this debate with a lot of interest. I am pleased to tell Mr Stevenson that the Government is supporting this particular amendment. So, if he thinks that the debate has been vehement so far, on something that we all agree on, he is in for a pretty robust night when we get to the point. Mr Berry said, at the end of his remarks, "We do not object to this particular provision"; but he was making more general remarks, addressing the fairly provocative general remarks that had been addressed to him. Madam Speaker, this is an amendment that the Government is not opposing. At a couple of points down the script we will be drawing a line in the sand and having a debate about the substance of Mr Moore's package. But, if this is any indication of the level of that debate, we are in for a ripper.
MR STEVENSON (8.39): Madam Speaker, I thank the Attorney-General. I did not know that. To go back to the original Bill, we could say that there were not many choices offered. There was a ban on smoking in places determined by the Minister or, the legislation not being passed, the maintenance of the status quo. But there are other ideas. The initial McNair Anderson poll, organised by the Federal Health Department, suggested that most people would ban smoking outright. It was an important question that they asked about banning; but that was the only one that they asked. The Hotels Association asked another important question. They asked, "Should there be a choice?". The majority of people said that there should be a choice. There was also a third question, which was reasonable. It related to maintenance of the status quo, whereby the owners decide for themselves.
We asked all three questions. That gave people a fair opportunity to have a say, so that we could find out what the community wanted. What we want is important; what the Health Department wants is important; and what the Hotels Association wants is important; but what the people want is very important. This is what the people said about the requirement to have separate smoking and non-smoking areas in restaurants. Forty-five per cent favour that; 37 per cent favour an outright ban in restaurants; and 14 per cent favour the restaurant management determining whether their establishment becomes smoking or non-smoking. A couple of per cent were not sure. That is why I support some of the amendments that Mr Moore has presented and that are more contentious from the Labor Party's viewpoint. In certain circumstances they will allow those restaurant establishments and others that wish to have smoking areas and also non-smoking areas to have that. No doubt, the people that require a choice want to have a valid choice. They do not want to sit on one side of the plane, in the non-smoking section, and have, on the other side of the plane, an arm's reach away, the smoking section. That is not really a choice. So the idea that there should be some sort of a standard would, no doubt, be accepted by the majority of people, without having a survey. That is the suggestion that has been made in Mr Moore's amendments, and they are the ones to which I agree.
Mr Connolly said that the particular amendment that we are talking about at the moment seems to be generating some heat, but that it could get a lot worse. I do not believe that. We have some differences of opinion. We feel that the community's interests will be best served by going in slightly different directions, at a slightly different pace. I am sure that we have the good of the community in mind and that a lot of people in the community will feel that there is a benefit in what we are going to do tonight.
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