Page 3943 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 25 November 2014
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On this point we expect the highest safety standards from our tradespeople. They are crucial holders of knowledge and expertise in the safe handling of this substance which, despite what we would all wish for, we will have to manage as part of Canberra’s built environment for a long time to come.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Master Builders Association, the Housing Industry Association, the Electrical Trades Union and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union for their active support and input into this safety reform. They, like the government, are seeking to put the safety of their members and all Canberrans as the highest priority in this work.
The government looks forward to continuing this cooperative approach, underpinned by these important legislative reforms, to continue to strive for best practice in the safe management of all forms of asbestos in the ACT.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
Bill agreed to.
Exhibition Park Corporation Repeal Bill 2014
Debate resumed from 23 October 2014, on motion by Mr Barr:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (10.52): If nothing else, Mr Barr is consistent, and in this case he has honoured one of his promises. He did say on 5 May 2009:
I advise the Assembly that we can expect to be revisiting this matter as a regular occurrence.
And here we are. We had a bill that dropped the size of the board; I think to render it unable to do its job properly. We have had a bureaucracy that has stifled the future of EPIC. I think it was in the estimates of 2006 that I first asked the then Chief Minister, Mr Stanhope, where was the master plan. Some eight years later, we are yet to have a master plan for EPIC. We had a strategic document, a one-pager—it was not much of a strategic plan—and I understand the master plan is still being worked on. It will be the most lovingly crafted master plan ever constructed, given the amount of time it has had in its genesis.
But the problems that beset EPIC are problems of the government’s creation, and they are saying that the answer to these problems is to allow the government to drag it back into the bureaucracy and then everything will be okay. The government clearly has its numbers. Mr Rattenbury has changed his view of the world. That is what comes from
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