Page 3292 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 September 1994
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To take it further, he continues to mislead the public. Madam Speaker, he will need to have a look at the transcript from this morning, but it may well be the case that he has misled this Assembly. I say "may" quite deliberately, so that Mr Berry can consider it and check. He can get a transcript of what I said this morning, have a look at the Hansard of today, and see whether he has misled this Assembly by what he thinks I said this morning. I believe that I did not say what he suggested in the debate this morning, and I encourage him to look at that issue and, if appropriate, to correct what he said in this place.
Madam Speaker, what I said was that Labor did not go far enough. The Bill that Mr Berry presented to this house was inadequate. It was inadequate and it was simplistic. It took a simplistic, prohibitionist stance on tobacco smoke. Those of us who have studied the impact of prohibition and how prohibition on other drugs came about throughout the last 100 years or so would know that the approach that Mr Berry has taken led to it being rolled. Those of us who know the damage caused by prohibition realise that it is better for us to look at harm minimisation, and that is what we have done. We have targeted the critical areas.
One of the most influential things for me was the meetings that Ms Ellis and I attended in New Zealand. We looked at the New Zealand legislation. Although this is landmark legislation for Australia, there was already legislation like it in New Zealand, the United States and so forth. When we went to New Zealand, what did we find? We found that their legislation demanded of people criteria that were already effectively in place in the ACT without legislation. They were talking about a requirement for 50 per cent of restaurants to be non-smoking. I think I am correct in saying that. Ms Ellis acknowledges that. They were talking about legislation that did that sort of thing; legislation way back before what had been presented by Mr Berry in this house and what was passed by this house yesterday. Madam Speaker, the reason I was so influenced by that was that I could see that already the ACT, without having to legislate, had achieved a great deal of what others were doing by legislation. The arguments presented to our committee by a number of people, on both sides, I must say, were the arguments of the evangelist. They were arguments that were extreme and we had to work our way through them. It was very difficult indeed, which is why I think the committee report was not a unanimous report. The issues were incredibly difficult to deal with, and the evidence was quite contradictory. I think Ms Ellis would agree with that. I am very proud of the report because we recognised that we had to target the areas where people were smoking that Labor had missed out on.
I would like to remind Mr Berry that our report identified, from a Victorian study, that people are likely to be exposed to environmental tobacco smoke for 6 per cent of their time, other than the 68 per cent of their time that is spent at home and the 18 per cent of their time that is spent at work. For about 6 per cent of their time indoors people are likely to be exposed. Of that 6 per cent of time indoors, other than at work or in the home, we are talking about a small percentage of time spent in restaurants. Maybe it is one per cent. Probably, at the very extreme, it is one per cent. In clubs and pubs it is probably at a higher level, and at clubs and pubs, as all of us know, the smoke is much more intense. Why has the Government failed to recognise that those are the areas of need, and why has the Canberra Times, again and again, failed to report that that is what the committee recommended?
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