Page 479 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 21 February 2012
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addressed, but it seems that it took an Auditor-General’s review and the elevation of this matter in the media for a number of these items to be identified and perhaps addressed.
Typically, when this issue arose in the media, Katy Gallagher went to ground. She often does when there is a bad news story, and she pushed out one of her bureaucrats who, at the time, said that they did not think the findings in terms of food safety outcomes or the way they manage acute responses were, in fact, adverse but there were things they can work on improving. The Auditor-General found some quite significant failings, and I guess it is a matter of interpretation whether they were adverse or just “some work that we can improve”.
The Auditor-General found that consumers are potentially at risk right now because the government was not putting in the right procedures, the right policies, to inspect food safety across eateries in the ACT or did not have the policies and procedures to respond if there was an outbreak. The Auditor-General found that; there is no political spin on that at all.
I quote again from the Auditor-General’s review:
There has been a sharp decline (almost 30 percent) in the number and proportion of scheduled inspections of registered food businesses, and an increase in inspections triggered by complaints or following-up enforcement actions.
In other words, what we were seeing is a reactive approach rather than a proactive approach. Indeed, the Auditor-General found that in relation to monitoring of noncompliance.
I have sought assurances from the government that these concerns are being addressed. I have received a briefing and I have been assured that all those matters are being addressed, and one would hope so. It is a government, though, that we have found difficult to trust in the past. It seems to me that some of this legislation coming forward and some of the media hype around it were pretty neatly planned and timed to come out at the same sort of time that we saw the Auditor-General’s report.
Whilst we had the Auditor-General saying the government was not managing its food safety practices in accordance with the requirements, we had Katy Gallagher coming out saying: “Look, we’re doing something. Don’t worry about that. Look, we’ve got something over here.” That is the context in which this legislation has been framed.
We certainly support the measures contained within this legislation. We just need to understand the context in which it has been presented. One issue this bill includes is, where an establishment has been closed due to noncompliance, that that be made clear to the public. That is an issue of transparency where the reason for the closure is to be put on the front of the premises, and I support that. I think that is a good idea.
Another issue is of a food safety supervisor being present in every business. Again, this has been rolled out in other jurisdictions and has merit. But my real concern is about how this will be implemented. I raised a number of issues regarding this—the
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