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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1549 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Their request is not unreasonable. They are not asking that moves by this Government and previous governments to discourage people from smoking be overturned. The time is being extended to enable them to get through a difficult period. It is a perfectly reasonable request. They are not asking for a huge amount of space to be made available in taverns for people who wish to smoke. A large percentage of the patrons of taverns are in fact smokers. There is a real danger that if taverns do not have some reasonable time in which to adjust, in the difficult economic circumstances they find themselves in today, a number of these small businesses will go broke. A number of workers in the ACT will be without jobs. Mr Berry supposedly champions ACT workers. He is not doing much to help workers in the ACT by his blinkered, narrow-minded objection to this sensible piece of legislation.

What the Chief Minister is proposing, and is being supported in by some other members of this house, is just a commonsense approach to enable a large number of small ACT businesses to buy some time so that they can comply with the law. It is all about jobs. It is jobs for Canberra. It is jobs for a large number of people in small businesses, families staying in employment and not going on the dole queue, which will happen if these businesses are forced to comply and buy expensive equipment. It is all right for the big clubs. They can afford it. They can put in smoke extractors. They have the money for that. For smaller clubs and the little taverns, it is hard. The Chief Minister has just acceded to a very reasonable request for more time for struggling businesses in Canberra, and I think Mr Berry should be ashamed of himself. If he is successful in opposing this legislation, there will be a number of Canberra workers without jobs in the next 12 to 18 months. I certainly hope members of this house will not adopt a blinkered attitude but will vote for this legislation as proposed by the Chief Minister.

It is true that this Assembly has been in the forefront in the campaign against smoking in Australia. That is something that we on this side of the house are very proud of. I can remember being a member of the Alliance Government when we introduced a number of measures to assist people to kick the smoking habit, but the fact is that a percentage of people in our community still smoke. Tobacco is still a legal substance. People are still entitled to smoke. People like smoking in pubs, taverns and clubs. While some people have been able to comply with the legislation and put in expensive extractors, others are having difficulty. All we are doing is respecting that difficulty and giving them a little extra time. To do otherwise is to adopt a very narrow, blinkered, anti-employment approach in this difficult time in the Territory's history.

MS TUCKER (6.07): This has been a very difficult decision for the Greens to make. I would support most of what Mr Berry said about the consequences of environmental tobacco smoke. They are obviously well documented. Tobacco smoke is a class A carcinogen, and protecting the community from such a health hazard is obviously an important obligation of government. I would be careful about talking too much about jobs, Mr Stefaniak, because I think jobs in hospitals are going to come from smoking. The consequences of cigarette smoking are very well documented.

Having listened to the community groups that are acknowledged as having as their focus public health and the issue of smoking lobby us to support the Government on this extension, we have decided to support the Government. The reason given by those groups and by the Government is that unless an extension is granted this legislation may

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