Page 3835 - Week 12 - Thursday, 30 October 2014
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As members of the Assembly are well aware, asbestos is a most insidious legacy of past building practices. As a government, we must be forward looking and introduce measures that protect both the safety of the community and those who work within it. For this reason, the government is introducing this bill and associated regulation amendment to modernise asbestos safety management in the territory.
This legislative reform package adopts the national harmonised asbestos safety model regulations, with a small number of significant adaptations, to preserve the territory’s strong stance on asbestos safety, consolidates relevant asbestos-related definitions into the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 and transfers the licensing function for asbestos assessors and removalists to work health and safety laws, as is the case with other high risk work licences, retains current duties in the Dangerous Substances Act 2004 insofar as they apply to situations not covered by the work health and safety laws, including do-it-yourself home renovations, and makes necessary consequential amendments to the Dangerous Substances Act 2004, Work Health and Safety Act 2011, Building Act 2004 and the Construction Occupations (Licensing) Act 2004 and subordinate laws.
The reform package will enhance asbestos safety in the territory by clarifying safety management of asbestos in residential premises, ensuring WorkSafe ACT as the work safety regulator is notified of asbestos removal work five days before it commences, introducing health monitoring provisions for workers who are exposed to asbestos, aligning regulatory frameworks with other jurisdictions facilitating mutual recognition of comparable asbestos assessor and removalist licence holders, ensuring judicial review focuses on safety with effective licence suspension provisions, improving safety outcomes by requiring class A asbestos removalists to have a certified safety management system, adopting up-to-date model asbestos codes of practice and permitting the territory to approve asbestos-specific codes which cater for our largely unique situation regarding loose fill asbestos.
It is important to note that this reform package does not adopt the national model regulations word for word. Rather, the government has been diligent in ensuring that safety standards are not reduced as a consequence of the reform and, where possible, we have made decisions that strengthen work health and safety regulation over and above that of other jurisdictions.
Some examples of this are where we have removed the ability for an unlicensed competent person to undertake functions reserved for licensed asbestos assessors in the territory. In the ACT this critical work must be undertaken by a licensed asbestos assessor. A regulation has been added to specify that asbestos must be assumed to be present if an approved warning sign is displayed at the premises. An approved warning sign is unique to the territory and relates to residential premises known to have contained loose fill asbestos.
The territory has mandated an asbestos awareness training course that must be undertaken by workers who may carry out work involving asbestos. The Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations has also declared a list of certain occupations that must undertake this training course, and we have omitted the section in the model regulation which permits the removal of up to 10 square metres of non-friable asbestos or asbestos-contaminated dust without an asbestos removal licence.
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