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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4231 ..

felt that, given that most houses that contain asbestos material were built up until 1983, and some up until 1987, because of stock piles of asbestos related material, it was important that we include this information to give the community and industry some certainty. I am not going to speak more to it because it is probably going to go down.

MS GALLAGHER (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Children, Youth and Family Support, Minister for Women and Minister for Industrial Relations) (10.05): The government will be opposing this amendment. The amendment seeks to include the meanings for the terms “high-risk activity” and “high-risk premises”. The government opposes such a measure as it presupposes the findings of the task force. It is the task force that should determine what activities and which premises are of what concern.

Furthermore, the meaning of “high-risk activity” proposed by Mrs Cross is too narrow and allows for no refinement or expansion. The meaning of “high-risk” premises that Mrs Cross’s amendment proposes focuses on buildings for which construction began before 1 January 1988, which is a date that I certainly have not been advised is critical. I understand that there is a difference of opinion about the date and at which point before or after that date buildings should be of concern.

A date picked today would be very difficult for the government to accept without having some very firm advice that 1 January 1988 is the date that we should agree to. Again, we believe this matter should be left to the task force. Anecdotal evidence is that construction of buildings begun in 1988 should be asbestos free, but the point of the task force is to collect that data. The community is not properly protected by relying just on the views of some people without the benefit of a full look at the situation in the ACT.

MS TUCKER (10.07): The Greens will not be supporting this amendment. It defines high-risk premises. The government’s approach is to define high-risk activity—and, subsequently, high-risk premises—through regulation, building on the work of a task force. I think that the principles of this act are strong enough to provide the guidelines and the intent for the task force to ensure that it comes forward with a sufficiently exhaustive approach. The Assembly, and through it the community, will have time to consider both the task force’s report and any supposed regulations.

MR STEFANIAK (10.07): The minister makes sense there. However, on clause 6, I make the same point I made earlier in relation to now setting in place a sensible regime. Again, we have not had a huge amount of time to consider these parts of it. The law-making will be far more effective in the end if we let the expert task force do its job and come down with what is actually needed in terms of the legislation so that it will all be up and running nicely before 16 January 2006. The points I have made are just as valid for section 6 as they are for section 5. Hence, we oppose section 6.

MS DUNDAS (10.08): I also cannot support this amendment. There has been a lot of concern about the original bill. Which buildings are we talking about, which premises do we need to do a report on—all premises? Are there some premises that would not need a report to be done on them, and should we be concentrating our efforts on where we know there is asbestos? All these different questions, as I mentioned at the detail stage, were raised about the original bill.

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