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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4217 ..

asbestos activists were keen to see the Assembly take a more emphatic legislative stance. As I said, I commend them for that activism.

Mrs Cross then took up the cause and of course created a greater focus again, for which I commend her. I want to say that I was concerned about statements in the media from Mrs Cross to the effect that there were politics being played with people’s lives. I want to put on the record that that was never the case. People in this place have been looking at the details of the proposals from Mrs Cross. I took a number of distressed phone calls as a result of that media statement and reassured them that people here were working with rigour and integrity in dealing with the issue. I think it is regrettable that those statements were made by Mrs Cross because they caused unnecessary distress.

To talk to this legislation and the amendments: the initial approach of this bill, prior to amendments, is to impose a requirement on the sale of all residential properties and granting tenancies to include a report detailing the location and condition of all asbestos in the building. While the intention very clearly is to protect home owners and new residents in the first instance, it is very narrow in its scope; it fails to reach many of the people most at risk from asbestos and it does not build any compliance or enforcement mechanisms into the process.

It could also run the risk of shifting the liability from the material manufacturers to inspectors and property owners. This is a really interesting concern and has come up in research by some of the proponents of this in the United States that were actually proposing this, which was, in a way, protecting the material manufacturer and shifting the liability. In response, the government has proposed a comprehensive task force which would report back to the Assembly with a more considered and hopefully exhaustive regime inside a year and, so it is argued, deliver concrete outcomes in the same time frame as the Cross bill. There has been concern, however, to see that concrete legislation to address the problem is put in place promptly and it has been argued that taking the task force approach alone is trivialising the issue.

Given the high public awareness of asbestos issues right now, due in part to the legal wrangles with James Hardie, it makes sense to take the opportunity to send a strong signal to the community that we would address the issue comprehensively but, as much as possible in these circumstances, with due consideration. I would like to acknowledge that the government responded very promptly and positively once it became clear that something more immediate was needed. And I give credit to Mrs Cross for being part of the impetus for that.

The government’s amendments that will be moved to this bill create a much more rigorous scheme. The government scheme includes a true scientific assessment of the presence of asbestos products in all ACT buildings. It applies to all buildings, including commercial and government-owned buildings. The scheme alerts all residents where asbestos is likely, not just at point of sale or rent, and institutes duty of care on householders, lessees and renovators. That is a more comprehensive and failsafe approach than the existing bill, with more concrete community safety outcomes.

The scheme includes a duty of care for government over buildings in its control, including all public housing. It is a government-wide scheme, so the costs are not directly imposed on the property owner if the residence is to be sold or upon the tenant if

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