Page 2081 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 August 2014
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many of these householders, their properties are their main investment and their main financial asset. Indeed, it is their financial future, whether they are a young family starting out or whether they are, for example, a retired couple. This is their financial future. It has been fatally compromised because of the continuing presence of this material in these properties.
What compounds that, of course, is that, unlike some other emergency where, say, your house was flooded or was destroyed as a result of a bushfire, there is no insurance. There is no safeguard or last resort available to you to recover your loss. Insurance does not cover issues associated with loss of value because of contamination with loose-fill asbestos fibre.
This is ultimately a space that government must step into. Whilst government does step into circumstances where there is a natural disaster, as it rightly should, in those circumstances there is at least still some private protection as well in place, such as through insurance arrangements. That is not the case here. So there is an even more compelling reason for the government to be in this space.
In the week or so leading up to the announced revision of portfolio responsibilities, I am grateful for the support and advice that the Chief Minister was able to lend me as the responsible minister as we ramped up our response to the ever-escalating level of concern and representations being received from property owners. I am also greatly encouraged by the non-partisan nature of this discussion to date. I would like to thank Mr Hanson and his colleagues and indeed all of the federal representatives on both sides of the political divide who have lent their support to this issue, because it does go beyond politics.
This is a problem that pre-dates the self-government of the territory. It is a problem that occurred despite the knowledge of certain commonwealth authorities at the time about the potential dangers and the potential risks and problems that would eventuate. So there is clearly an obligation on the part of the commonwealth as a jurisdiction to address and ameliorate this problem in coordination and cooperation with the ACT. I am encouraged that to date we have seen an increasingly positive, receptive and considered approach by the relevant commonwealth ministers. I trust that that is able to continue.
There is another issue, though, that needs to be addressed. That is the presence of this material in properties outside the ACT. In Queanbeyan, the south coast and other smaller rural communities in our region, this material is present in roofs and it has been there in situ pretty much ever since it has been installed. It has not been removed. It has not been remediated. These are real and pressing problems for those property owners as well. I think the response on the part of the New South Wales government has been disappointing. They have not had full regard to the issues that are clearly going to be present in relation to these properties.
I note that local governments in New South Wales have been far more proactive and concerned, and that is right and proper. But I think there is a real obligation on the part of other jurisdictions at a state level to engage more closely with this issue because those property owners too are facing real and meaningful detriment as a result of the presence of this material.
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