Page 654 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 February 2020
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The Greens, of course, agree with these objectives and are pleased that some changes are made in this bill to address them. The bill attempts to ensure that the people of Canberra will be able to obtain services that meet their religious or cultural needs. The bill explicitly requires that the licensee of a facility cannot refuse a request related to a burial or other service that is related to the deceased person’s religious or cultural group or other special category.
The bill requires operators to be competent and to keep records. This should help to ensure that the distressing case that Ms Cheyne brought to our attention, where Norwood Park crematorium lost a child’s ashes, is not repeated. The bill will also make it easier to regulate non-government providers of cemeteries and crematoria by providing an explicit licensing system for them.
The new act will also require the authority to have at least two members who represent different religions or cultures. That is interesting; it goes back to my previous point that this should be a business unit of the ACT government. I think that is particularly the case where people will be appointed to the authority on the basis of representing different religious or cultural groups, rather than necessarily having the knowledge to run a cemetery or crematorium—or in fact any business of that size. It also increases the minimum number of members on the board from four to six. In practice I think the authority has been meeting these requirements in recent years; nonetheless, they are generally good ideas.
In summary, this bill is a useful refresh of the legislative framework for cemeteries and crematoria in the ACT. It is very positive that it recognises our diverse community and that this leads to different requirements. The requirement for effectively competent operation with reasonable records is entirely reasonable. It is interesting that it provides a framework for additional private operators, but it is very disappointing that the main financial fix regarding the issue of perpetual tenure is to let the cemeteries authority run what the government must hope will be a profitable crematorium. I think that the financial issues will need to have more work done on them in the future. As I said, the Greens will support this bill.
MR GUPTA (Yerrabi) (4.40): I am pleased to speak on the Cemeteries and Crematoria Bill 2019, introduced by Minister Steel in this place last year. Whilst speaking about cemeteries and cremation may be a morbid topic, it deals with perhaps the one thing that will affect every single Canberran at some point in their life.
The bill aims to streamline the process outlined in the Cemeteries and Crematoria Act 2003, which has not been comprehensively reviewed since it was introduced. The new bill seeks to outline a new framework for the operation of cemeteries and crematoria in the ACT, with the aim of making this painful process easier both for members of the community and for the operator of these facilities.
Perhaps one of the most significant aspects of this legislation is the new framework it establishes to allow members of our diverse community to practise their faith in relation to the death of loved ones. During the community consultation on the bill, around one in 10 members of the community with a religious or cultural need stated
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