Page 3706 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 28 October 2015
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
this comes down to the people that we are here to represent—making sure that we are doing what we can to provide answers for them, the community and now their neighbours, who are going to be massively impacted through the demolition process, through the rebuilding and through the variation to the territory plan which is, potentially, going to change, in many ways, the character of many neighbourhoods as a result of those government decisions.
I do not accept the answers given by this government that essentially this just is not a priority. That is Mr Barr’s answer, in essence, to the question of why he is not doing this: it is just not a priority for this government. I am disappointed by that response. We have seen some of the government’s priorities over this time. We know what we have debated in this place in terms of legislation; we have seen government programs. When the community looks at what the government establish as their priorities as opposed to what is the most significant issue to come before this Assembly, in the words of Mr Barr—to accept that this is the most significant issue to come before this Assembly and then say, “But we are not going to inquire into what went wrong over decades; we will put that on the never-never” is a dereliction of duty, a failure in leadership and, ultimately, lets down the people that we serve here in this Assembly.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Urban Renewal and Minister for Tourism and Events) (10.38): I move:
Omit all words after “That this Assembly”, substitute:
“(1) notes:
(a) in the Government response to the Assembly Standing Committee on Public Accounts’ inquiry into the proposed Appropriation (Loose-fill Asbestos Insulation Eradication) Bill 2014-2015, the ACT Government noted the need to consider the full history of the Mr Fluffy legacy;
(b) the ACT Government, through the Asbestos Response Taskforce, is currently responding to the Mr Fluffy crisis; that many Fluffy owners remain in their homes; the demolition process has only just begun and it will take up to five years to rid the ACT of the toxic Mr Fluffy legacy;
(c) an inquiry launched immediately would mean substantial distraction to the work of, and diversion of resources from, the Asbestos Response Taskforce, delaying the implementation of the Government’s response at the expense of those directly affected by Mr Fluffy;
(d) the Mr Fluffy legacy extends back to 1968, well before self-government in the ACT, and that the Commonwealth Government has played a central role in the Mr Fluffy legacy;
(e) the Mr Fluffy legacy extends into NSW, with the NSW Government creating a taskforce similar to the ACT to respond to the presence of loose-fill asbestos in homes throughout NSW;
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video