Page 3530 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 12 September 2017
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in each storey of the premises, and if there is a bedroom on that storey then it must be in every hallway or corridor associated with a bedroom. These regulations may sound quite straightforward and common sense, but the importance of clear rules around smoke alarms cannot be overstated.
In April 2016 the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee of the federal parliament published a report on the use of smoke alarms to prevent smoke and fire-related deaths. The committee noted the importance of smoke alarms as one element in preventing injury and deaths from smoke and fire. For example, based on hospital admission data, there were 103 fire-related fatalities between 2004 and 2015 in the Melbourne metropolitan district; 26 of these 103 fire-related fatalities occurred in homes where there was no smoke alarm or the smoke alarm was disarmed.
The Victorian Metropolitan Fire Brigade issued advice in 2013 that, without working smoke alarms, you are four times more likely to die in a house fire. Not having adequate smoke alarms means you are four times more likely to die in a house fire. The Metropolitan Fire Brigade also pointed out the importance of adequate smoke alarms in rental properties, which are at risk of falling through the cracks without clear rules on where the responsibility for smoke alarms lies. They found that 38 per cent of home owners only had one smoke alarm installed, compared to 46 per cent of rented properties.
I have been speaking to friends this morning about this, reflecting on my own experiences, which I will draw some attention to shortly. I am of the age when I have lots of friends who might now own a property or be a bit more careful about what sorts of protections they have in their homes. But they certainly recall that when they were first in a share house or first living in a rental property they did not have a smoke alarm in their home. That is personally distressing to me, so I am very glad about what this SLAB will achieve.
My personal story, for those in the chamber who are not aware of it, is that at university I went to a college called St John’s College, at UQ, in 2004 and 2005. In 2005, on Good Friday, our college—this is in Queensland—did not have smoke alarms. In fact, they were being installed that week in some of the older buildings. One of the things that you never expect to see, particularly on a day that is important for a number of other reasons—which was very important, because it meant that the college was largely empty—happened: a building burnt down.
The background to it is that there was a faulty cable. I think it was a fridge and it was, fortunately, locked in a fellow university student’s room. Literally some cables were hanging from the ceiling and these smoke alarms were being installed. It was just very, very fortunate that no-one died on that day. The only way that we were really able to alert people was by knocking on each other’s doors, going door to door and hoping that everybody was out. Because there were not smoke alarms installed, there was no way to ensure that people were alerted otherwise.
And while I certainly appreciate that that was in very different circumstances from what we are talking about here—in a different jurisdiction, over a decade ago and on a college campus—I think it really does underline those figures from the Victorian
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