Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Thursday, 12 February 2004) . . Page.. 335 ..

hope, and that any necessary changes can be identified and effected promptly. I think that is useful, even though we are adjourning the debate today.

Most of us are prepared to turn this bill around as quickly as is reasonable. That is because the bill is doing two things at once. Firstly, it introduces a wide-ranging regime to control the use of dangerous substances—something that is important but perhaps not time critical. Secondly, the bill centres on the fireworks industry. Having chosen to continue to allow some form of retail fireworks sales to continue in the ACT, the government is in a situation where it needs to have a new failsafe system in place well in time for the June long weekend.

I am on the record as recommending, through a Legal Affairs Committee inquiry in 2002, much tighter control of the industry system and, after the fiasco of last year’s fireworks season, pulling the plug on the industry altogether and supporting the bill introduced by Mr Pratt last year, which would have outlawed retail sales of fireworks. We were not successful then and, clearly, would not be successful if that were tried again. Nevertheless, it seems that the fairly dramatic change in the scope of retail sales that would be allowed under this bill and the fact that WorkCover and the fireworks retailers have been a real part of the development of this scheme might give us reason to hope that this year will be different.

It is for those reasons that there is a good case to give the new regime its best chance of getting bedded down. The passage of this bill will give the regulators and industry time to set up the necessary testing, training, storage arrangements, procedures and so on. The principle of this bill is that it puts a positive obligation of duty of care onto the people responsible for dangerous substances. In that way it echoes provisions in the current OH&S Act and foreshadows more changes to the OH&S Act.

The bill sets out requirements to establish safety management strategies, to assess and manage risk and to document the handling, management and labelling of such substances. It includes a coherent licensing system which applies consistently to all dangerous substances including explosives, chemicals and other dangerous materials and articles. It articulates compliance measures, enforcement powers, appeal rights and the range of offences and penalties. I will not describe all of those arrangements to this Assembly again. I would rather make the point that the regime is comprehensive and applies in graduated degrees to a wide range of substances dealing with all stages of their manufacture, management, sales, distribution and use.

I will, however, talk briefly through some of the changes to the management of consumer fireworks. In the first instance, the much tighter licensing regime for all dangerous substances should ensure an audit trail of all fireworks from importation or manufacture to end user. The requirement to maintain such a record will revert to the business owner. Any fireworks that are not sold within the one-week firework period will need to be returned to the supplier. No fireworks will be sold to non-ACT residents. Fireworks themselves will not be as loud or explosive as we have been used to. There will also be a much stronger enforcement provision.

We should have some clear information on the success of the scheme immediately after the first week of fireworks sales in June this year. Furthermore, the review I have proposed to include in the bill, which will need to be carried out after June 2005, while

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .