Page 192 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 23 February 1994
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Therefore, at the very least, Mr Berry, we must have a timeframe for when you plan to ban smoking in all of these other places where you say you plan to ban it, but seem to be giving all sorts of commitments to people that you are not going to.
I have not touched on the stupidity of some of the fines in this area and the obvious problem of attempting to police a piece of legislation that does not have the support of the industry. If Mr Berry went down our track and looked at a phase-in period and a level playing field, the industry would come along with the whole approach, as has happened in airports and on the planes. The reason it works at airports and in planes is that the whole industry came on board. We have a capacity to bring everybody with us on this. Unfortunately, Mr Berry, you have chosen to go down a track that has created an adversarial problem, when you had at your disposal the capacity for every member of this Assembly, or almost every member, to support you.
I will finish off by saying that this is a piece of legislation that is impossible to police, because we simply do not have the people to do so. We do not even have the people to ensure that cigarettes are not being sold to under-18s - - -
Mr De Domenico: But the Minister is going to do it himself.
MRS CARNELL: That is right. It is in there. A piece of legislation about which the industry has not been brought on board, a piece of legislation that unfortunately creates a very unlevel playing field, simply will not work. The Liberal Party totally supports a ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces, but believes that there should be a phase-in period and that extraction systems should be investigated to see whether they achieve the end.
MR MOORE (3.41): Madam Speaker, the long title of this Bill is "A Bill for an Act to prohibit or restrict tobacco smoking in certain enclosed public places, and for related purposes". That is why, Madam Speaker, I have no hesitation whatsoever in supporting this Bill in principle. Some of the hysteria and some of the falsehoods that have been raised in the media by Mr Berry over this issue really do not do him much justice. I think the interjections we heard during the previous speech reflect the difficulties of Mr Berry's own arguments. His own arguments founder on his exemptions for the casino and areas that have poker machines, gaming machines. If he were genuinely interested in the impact of passive smoking he would say that we should proceed with a ban as quickly as possible, and a total ban. He realises that the issue is not as black and white as that. He knows that there are questions about implementation. There are questions about how the goal that he wants, that I believe we all want, can be implemented. The only questions that have been raised over this Bill relate to implementation of the principle and the concept of the Bill, which is carefully spelt out in that long title.
We have heard the approach taken by the Leader of the Opposition. She talked about ventilation, using the Australian standards to get a level of ventilation and to determine whether or not people are exposed to passive smoking. Of course, there is another approach, and that is simply to monitor particulates to determine whether the 40 or so carcinogens or the 2,000 chemicals released through cigarette smoking can be measured, and whether or not we can determine that an area is actually free from smoke or that it is at an acceptable level. Mr Berry, in his speech, talked about an acceptable level.
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