Page 3938 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 25 November 2014
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Attempting to adopt the regulations into the ACT’s existing dangerous goods legislation, as was originally intended in 2011, proved to be unwieldy. Some of the difficulties included issues with definitions, issues relating to duty holders and that the structure of the legislation was not a good fit for adopting the model regulations. The model regulations will place duties on a person conducting a business or undertaking. They are prevented from carrying out or directing or allowing a worker to carry out work involving asbestos other than in specified circumstances. They also have a general duty to eliminate or minimise exposure to airborne asbestos at the workplace as far as is reasonably practicable.
Other obligations include ensuring the presence and location of asbestos at the workplace is clearly indicated, training workers, and notifying the regulator—that is WorkSafe—about asbestos removal work, which may only be undertaken by licensed asbestos removalists.
The existing ACT regulations already use a licensing and compliance model for asbestos removalists. The model regulations will replace this regime, centralising the licensing with other work health and safety laws. This will be managed by JACS instead of the current system which shares the regulation between EPD and JACS.
In relation to demolition, the regulation requires people conducting a business or undertaking to identify and as far as practicable remove asbestos before any demolition occurs. The requirements extend to the demolition of residential properties, something not included in our existing Dangerous Substances Act, so it is of particular importance to the government’s loose-fill asbestos task force. This new regulation will require advanced notification of WorkSafe before asbestos removal work is conducted on any homes contaminated with loose-fill asbestos.
The notification is a good improvement on the current asbestos framework as it will allow WorkSafe the opportunity to check the work before it occurs. For example, it will be able to validate that those proposing to undertake the work are properly licensed. It is a better administrative arrangement to have these powers and administrative functions centralised in WorkSafe, which has expertise in this area and has recently been provided with additional resources. It also has experience and expertise in the area of building and construction, and a lot of its efforts have been focused in this area since the getting them home safely report.
The model regulation also requires a person with management or control of a workplace to identify asbestos, keep an asbestos register and an asbestos management plan and remove asbestos as far as is reasonably practicable before work such as refurbishment is done at the workplace.
In addition to the new model regulation, which focuses on the workplace and people with duties at the workplace, the ACT Dangerous Substances Act will continue to operate. It creates a general safety duty on everybody involved in handling dangerous substances regardless of whether they are in the workplace or not. I understand that the Dangerous Substances Regulation will also soon be updated to clarify obligations and offences around the removal of asbestos from other premises that are not workplaces.
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