Page 4182 - Week 13 - Thursday, 27 November 2014
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MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (12.01): We are back here today to talk about the Food Amendment Bill. I would have to say that it is no great surprise, given the way that this bill was originally framed, put together and tabled in the Assembly back in 2012. It is important, I think, that we understand the history so that we understand why we are here trying to clean it all up, because that is what this is. This is the clean-up of the bill. People would know it as the sausage sizzle fiasco or the quiche police. Community outrage has led to a reversal of the government’s position and our coming back here today to tidy it all up.
The history goes back to the Auditor-General’s report into the management of food safety in the Australian Capital Territory that was tabled in December 2011. That could only be viewed as a damning report. I have a copy here that has been kindly highlighted by my staff that really goes through a litany of problems that were happening within the food inspectorate of ACT Health. Essentially, the problems were not so much the legislation but the actual implementation of that legislation. I quote from the report:
The registration and renewal files were frequently incomplete and registration data within the Health Manager database was inaccurate … Registration files reviewed by Audit held no evidence of review and approval by appropriately delegated officers between 2003-2009 … Registration renewals for these businesses have been neither timely nor effective … unable to achieve its own targets … the Public Health Complaints database was not accurate … the database does not contain does not contain sufficient information to facilitate effective management of Food Safety Programs … the Health Protection Service has not developed formal policies and procedures … Documentation on enforcement files in the Health Management Database was incomplete or inaccurate … the Service’s responses to non-compliance with the Food Act have been largely reactive.
There are a number of recommendations that came out of that. In the same sort of time period, there were a number of problems that arose with food poisoning. There was then a significant amount of attention paid to this issue by the media, particularly the Canberra Times. There was enormous pressure then for the minister to be seen to be doing something, to be seen to be responding. There was talk about scores on doors and about naming and shaming. All these sorts of things were flying around. The minister had to be seen to be acting. She came out with essentially a piece of legislation to attempt to demonstrate action.
A lot of it was to do with the failings that had been identified in the Auditor-General’s report. But rather than let those flow through, let those amendments take place, there was then a rush to get that off the table politically, I suppose. I can go back through to the debate that happened in February 2012, where I made these points.
In the legislation that got brought forward, in the amendments and then the discussions that we had with the directorate staff, a number of questions were asked about websites for the sort of name-and-shame aspect and about the engagement with the community. We were told, “That is ongoing. Trust us; we have got to get this
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