Page 3607 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 25 August 2009
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that is the point, is it not?—public consultation. The word “lost” there is operative. It still has not dawned on the poor old Liberal Party that they lost the last election. They lost the last election, bleating about public consultation, and now, almost, what, 10 months on, they cannot think of a single matter of greater public importance with which to fritter away the Assembly’s valuable time than this.
Just this morning, Mrs Dunne hopped onto local radio to explain why the Liberals will not vote for a ban on fireworks. “There was not enough consultation,” she said. Why does she not have the guts to come out and say, “We won’t vote for the ban on fireworks because we’re in opposition for opposition’s sake”? This is a party that went to the last election promising, if they were elected, to ban fireworks. Actually Mr Pratt, just before the last election, introduced legislation or a motion in this place banning fireworks in the ACT. It was the Liberal Party’s position. But, this morning, today, yesterday, no; like a rabbit in the headlights, Mrs Dunne comes out and says, “Oh, no, we won’t have a bar of this, because there hasn’t been enough consultation.”
For the benefit of those opposite, allow me to place on record the degree of consultation that went into the government’s decision to ban consumer fireworks. In 2002, the government held an inquiry into the use of consumer fireworks. That inquiry concluded that fireworks were commonly used illegally outside the June long weekend, were generally a public nuisance, caused distress and injury to animals and damaged property. Notwithstanding these findings, the government knew that banning fireworks ought to be the last option after all other options had been exhausted. Thus, the continued use of fireworks was permitted after that public inquiry in 2002 but under a much stricter regulatory regime. Unfortunately for all those Canberrans who enjoy cracker night and abide by the rules, some of their fellow Canberrans did not. Calls for a ban grew louder.
I have no doubt that the Liberals will say that it would all have been sorted if only the government could have equipped police officers with teleportation devices so that they could swoop on antisocial Canberrans letting off firecrackers outside the designated hours before they vanished into the night. Anyone with an ounce of common sense will realise that this is not a resourcing issue; it is a logistical issue.
I return to my recitation of the consultation that went into the making of the decision to ban fireworks. In 2007, the Dangerous Substances Act 2004 and the consumer fireworks regulations were reviewed. In 2002, there was a public inquiry; in 2007, there was a major overhaul of the Dangerous Substances Act. I do hate to contradict Mrs Dunne, of course, and her opposition for opposition’s sake, but this review involved extensive community consultation, as recently as 2007, including the release of an issues paper for public comment, an online community survey, public meetings, focus groups with stakeholders and industry participants, two random telephone surveys of 1,000 Canberrans to canvass the community’s views and experiences in relation to the 2008 consumer fireworks season and two consultant’s reports detailing the results of the consultation. Here we have today: no consultation, no consultation on this issue.
What did we take into account in the decisions we made in relation to fireworks? Let us go back to the last major attempt at actually dealing with this issue holistically. We
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