Page 2083 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 August 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
So it goes beyond the tradie. It is the friends of these people. Do you tell a family that you have a Mr Fluffy home? Do you have to tell the babysitter, the nanny or the cleaner? Do you have to tell the lady that delivers meals on wheels or the community nurse? Those that live in the homes are clearly most affected, but do you tell the parents of your son’s best friend that he is entering a Mr Fluffy home?
There is a ramification beyond those that lived there for us as a community. It is important that we as a community respond. For those that owned the home and want to stay, who do not want anything done, there is the long-term problem then for the community. Subsequent owners might want to replace a cornice, knock out a wall, renovate a bathroom or extend a room. The problem will rear its ugly head again and again.
As others have said, and I agree, we need a permanent, lasting answer. We need a permanent and lasting solution. As Mr Hanson and the Chief Minister have mentioned, perhaps it is that they will all eventually be demolished. But let us have a good process that leads us to an outcome that secures the future for all of us.
I would like to commend Mr Hanson on his leadership on this issue as well as the Chief Minister. But it was Mr Hanson who first called for emergency relief funding of $5 million. The government saw the wisdom of that and it upped the ante. It made $10 million available. That is a good thing. It was Mr Hanson who came up with the idea for the accountable method to notify and keep residents informed. I am pleased to hear the Chief Minister give him the credit for that. It is working. We have seen the spike in the responses, because people just did not know.
Indeed, I grew up a house in Curtin that had some loose-fill asbestos in the roof. Dad rang and said, “Oh my God, what have I done?” I said, “Well, dad, you have never had a letter, you have not got a letter, and you did not have that sort of home.” But for older people it must be very disconcerting. I have had contact from people who think they lived in a Mr Fluffy home in the 1970s or 1980s and wanted to know how they could find out. It goes beyond those that own the homes. They are clearly the most affected, but we have got to get this right for the entire community.
It does raise an issue. Mr Fluffy is the specific issue at this moment, but in the broad everywhere that we turn now in the ACT we seem to have some sort of problem with asbestos. There are long-term problems for the ACT. We know that when remediation was carried out on the old Australian government publishing site, they not only cleaned up lead-based inks but there were also problems with asbestos.
We know that the East Lake developments have encountered problems with asbestos. We know the brickworks has asbestos. Indeed, there was an article earlier in this week where we know that roads may now be going over such sites. Perhaps once we fix the Mr Fluffy issue we should have a survey and a plan to address long-term the issue of asbestos in the ACT so that we work out where else it might be and what else needs to be done so that we can actually eradicate this problem out of our community for the safety of all time.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video