Page 4330 - Week 13 - Thursday, 4 December 2014
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The recommendations in the report concerning my electorate of Ginninderra, and particularly where I live in west Belconnen, are recommendations 44 to 50. They concern a whole bunch of issues that we need to do some work around and reassure people in the community. When I talk to people who live in west Belconnen—and I do that every day—there is some concern. But I do not think scaring people unnecessarily is the solution to this. These recommendations go to reassuring people about how much we have learned about asbestos, how much we have learned about the safe transportation of asbestos, and how much we have learned about how we can safely demolish homes in the ACT and not put any further homes, families or the broader community at risk.
So I acknowledge the committee’s work in bringing these recommendations to the attention of the ACT government. Based on the responses that we got during the hearings, during the inquiry, from the minister for TAMS, Mr Rattenbury, I think TAMS will be working hard on making sure that everybody in our community is kept safe during the demolition of affected homes and the transport of asbestos from affected homes to west Belconnen.
I am particularly interested in seeing if there are other alternatives. One of the things that people perhaps do not know—I think more and more of this information is getting out to members of our community—is that west Belconnen was always the asbestos tip. It is not a new tip that was decided upon; it always existed. It was always the site and a number of Mr Fluffy homes, around four, already have been demolished, disposed of and are at west Belconnen.
We do need to keep in mind that, if we want to make sure that this is the end of Mr Fluffy in Canberra, we should do everything we can to make sure that the community understand that everybody is doing their utmost to make sure that people are kept safe from asbestos. It is a risk, and unfortunately I do not think everybody does understand the risk of asbestos, but I hope through this process that people will understand more clearly that there is a great risk to people’s health and to the community.
I look forward again to seeing what the ACT government’s responses are to these particular recommendations, so that we can provide as much information as possible to the Canberra community, particularly to the people who live in west Belconnen, about the demolition process, and distribute information to affected suburbs so that they can be clear about what risk there is, if any, and what the ACT government is doing to ensure that people are kept safe in our community.
MR WALL (Brindabella) (11.13): I think it is evident from the speeches on all sides of the chamber today that there is no simple, perfect solution to the Mr Fluffy problem. The scheme that is proposed is far from perfect; any flexibility that can be built into it to give home owners a bit more choice about the way forward and the options that they have available to them will make it slightly better than it is, bearing in mind that perfection is something that will fail to be achieved in this scheme, given that there is just such a diverse range of needs, views and opinions of the 1,021 home owners and residents.
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