Page 3531 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 12 September 2017
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Metropolitan Fire Brigade that if you do not have adequate smoke alarms installed you are four times more likely to die in a house fire. We should not be leaving things up to luck, like they were in my situation. I still have nightmares regularly about watching that building burn to the ground. I know that many of the students there lost all of their belongings. It really was just luck that it was Good Friday and that people were not there. We should not be leaving things up to luck. We should not be leaving things up to codes that might not be quite fit for purpose. That exactly points to why these rules and these updated regulations are so important.
Ensuring that our rules on smoke alarms in tenanted properties are clear and provide adequate protection is absolutely critical. These rules can save lives. By drawing the obligations relating to smoke alarms out of the building code and implementing new, straightforward regulations, we are ensuring that tenants are given the best chance of escaping a fire in case disaster strikes. This is just one example of the importance of technical amendments in the Statute Law Amendment Bill or, as we fondly call it, the SLAB. This bill makes a range of changes to existing legislation to amend technical errors and to ensure coherence in our statute books. I hope I injected a little bit of excitement for members here today.
Mr Hanson: Yes, we are excited.
MS CHEYNE: So excited—I hope Hansard is recording that. With that, I absolutely commend this bill to the Assembly.
MR RAMSAY (Ginninderra—Attorney-General, Minister for Regulatory Services, Minister for the Arts and Community Events and Minister for Veterans and Seniors) (11.55), in reply: As I start, I would like to acknowledge and thank the members—Mr Hanson, Mr Rattenbury and Ms Cheyne—for their contributions to the debate and for their support of this bill. I would also like to note that it is good to see the way that cooperation and humour can come from a SLAB. It is fun when you see those all brought together, as well as them managing also to highlight the importance of people’s stories and the way that what may seem quite technical, quite dry amendments can actually have significant impacts on people’s lives. That is one of the prime reasons why this government continues this process.
This bill does carry on the technical amendments program that continues to develop a simpler, more coherent and more accessible statute book for the territory through minor legislative changes. Statute law amendment bills provide an important and useful mode for continually modernising the ACT statute book. A well-maintained statute book is a very practical measure to assure members of the community that we are committed to meeting their needs. Regular reviews and regular updates help to ensure that our laws are relevant, are fair and are kept up to date. And through these amendment bills we ensure that we maintain a minimum, consistent standard in the presentation and the cohesion of legislation.
Our legislation comes from different sources. It comes from many different time periods, and SLABs help to ensure that our legislation is consistently easy to understand and drafted in a way that makes sense to people who wish to understand our laws. These bills are an efficient mechanism to take care of non-controversial,
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