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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 3348 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I understand that debate on this bill is to be adjourned today, but if the bill does not get support whenever we finish debating it, the government should take that as a message to continue to provide some funds for cemeteries in the public interest. My advice for the minister's office is that the trust will not be endangered if this bill is voted down. The Greens believe that essentials services must be kept in public control. Regarding non-essential services, we believe that commercialisation or privatisation of public assets must be subject to social, environmental and economic cost-benefit analyses and appropriate community consultative processes.

The Allen Group, in their national competition policy review, assessed the decision not to sell control of Woden Cemetery as effectively a market choice in favour of the current operator, the cemeteries trust. They missed substantial alternative interpretations of this decision.

The part of this bill which is most objectionable to people is the opening up the way for private operators of cemeteries-for competition. Cemeteries fulfil the role of a place of rest for bodies and ashes of deceased people, which is important to the families and friends of the deceased.

This is another of those debates about the role of government and about what work or tasks in society are properly public roles and what are properly business roles. We are talking about whether it is proper that a cemetery should be run as a business, with competition between different companies, or whether a cemetery should be run for the public good and be for the community as a whole.

The competition policy review which precipitated this bill talked of a freedom to specify and vary tenure conditions. The review recommended that this freedom be offered at public and private cemeteries. The government's bill will offer it only in private cemeteries, which has probably avoided an immediate outcry. However, the same issues remain.

This kind of freedom would be more or less a burden, depending on your financial circumstances. People on low incomes have the freedom to choose cut-price bargain food, shelter and clothes and to make choices between these items. These choices are not acceptable, and I hope that we will see a change from the punishment approach to welfare soon, in recognition of the false choices that are entailed in this approach.

Do we want to set up our cemeteries so that if you are impoverished you or the Public Trustee, who may pay for your funeral, will have the freedom to choose a limited tenure burial plot?

The benefits of cemeteries are not only about the individuals who are bereaved and who will be paying the immediate costs of burial and maintenance of the area. Why are cemeteries important? Dead people often hold meaning for later generations of relatives and for people who come to know of them through their work as artists, musicians, singers, footballers, et cetera. A graveyard, a headstone, a place that is kept peaceful and respectful, may not be the only means of remembering the departed but cemeteries can be important places to those who choose this form of remembrance. They fulfil a spiritual need for people across many religious denominations and for people who do not have a religion. This is not an area which we believe should be open to competition.

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