Page 3708 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 28 October 2015
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It is now common knowledge that raw, pure asbestos fibres were pumped into the ceilings of more than 1,000 Canberra houses in the late 1960s and 1970s. Use of asbestos in that form and in that way remains unique to the ACT and surrounding New South Wales.
The Asbestos Response Taskforce’s report of August 2014, which underpins the scheme, sets out in detail what happened. Those of us who are long-term residents of Canberra can remember houses being enclosed in plastic bubbles when the original removal program was undertaken in the early 1990s. That program, designed by the commonwealth government and implemented by a fledgling ACT government in the very first years of self-government, should have been the end of the story. Unfortunately, as we all know, it was not.
What we did not know until last year was that the residual asbestos fibres that the clearance certificates said were left behind when visible and accessible asbestos were removed were not only in the walls but in the living areas. That is why the government decided, in October last year, to implement the scheme and to deliver an enduring solution to problems created for our community so long ago.
The government has always maintained that there should be a proper examination—at the right time and, of course, in the right way—of why that decision was necessary last year. We have also consistently said, though, that any inquiry must not divert attention or resources away from what remains the most pressing need, which is assisting families in the best way we can to move from contaminated houses to safer accommodation. This is not the time or place to debate the merits of the scheme beyond the observation that before June last year none of what is now in place to provide assistance to owners of affected properties to move from contaminated houses and to manage risks if they chose to stay existed in any form. Much of it had not been developed yet. The government will not be supporting Mr Hanson’s motion today. I have moved the amendments I have circulated to colleagues. We will not be supporting Mr Hanson’s motion because it is premature and, most significantly, because it glosses over a range of significant complexities, particularly in setting such an artificial deadline, based on a political imperative, on a process that he himself believes is so important and therefore, in our view, should not be rushed.
A story of this magnitude, this complexity and this significance deserves to be reviewed and written through a process that is robust, that is comprehensive and that, above all, provides proper and considered answers as to why this city faced the crisis it did last year. To do less than this, to heed to some sort of political timetable as outlined by the Leader of the Opposition, would be an enormous disservice to the community—not just for the owners who have lived and raised their families in those properties, but for anyone who has ever worked on those properties and for visitors who frequented them over that time.
Despite Mr Fluffy operating on the commonwealth’s watch and the original removal program being a commonwealth-designed initiative, in this case the commonwealth’s response, under the Abbott government, was to renege on the signed commitments
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