Page 1754 - Week 06 - Thursday, 19 May 1994
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Mr Moore: From the chair of the committee that put the standards together.
MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed, the report is prepared by the chair of the committee, as Mr Moore points out. With great respect and without wishing to be attacked for being personal towards Mr Berry, Mr West - the chairman of this committee and a director of Gutteridge Haskins and Davey Pty Ltd, with some expertise in the area - has a little more technical knowledge of this matter than does Mr Wayne Berry.
MR STEVENSON (12.21): Madam Speaker, I will speak briefly on the report because it has only just been tabled and I have not had a chance to read it. I did not have anybody on the committee that may have facilitated that to some degree. I will wait until the Government responds to mention the details. It should be said that the recommendation is totally and immediately to ban smoking in many areas, both public areas and commercial areas. I am not sure of the extent of the ban in some of these areas. The report mentions an immediate ban on smoking in such places as shopping malls. Within shopping malls there are many types of businesses, including restaurants. If this recommendation is approved, does it immediately ban smoking in restaurants? If so, is that not a hardship for restaurants? Are not many of the arguments that were raised negated by the recommendation?
The report further says that after a particular period there will be a total ban on smoking in restaurants, although there is an allowance for some places to apply for an exemption. All small restaurants, one would assume, would be under severe hardship to meet those standards, and that is also of concern. One wonders what size restaurant we are talking about here.
Mrs Carnell mentioned that the industry has already accommodated rapid changes and that normal market forces are taking place. It was said that the committee received the names of over 100 restaurants in the ACT alone - in this large country town or small city - where smoking is already banned and people can eat without any concern for smoking. So market forces were obviously having the effect that market forces always have. If people want to go to other places, they have always been able to do that, and this is probably why most people in Canberra did not favour a total ban. They favoured an opportunity to have segregated areas in restaurants and, no doubt, in many other areas. I do not know what exactly the recommendations in this report will mean in those areas until I have read it fully and heard a couple of the questions answered, particularly about restaurants within malls. We have very large malls and much of our shopping goes on in these places.
MR MOORE (12.25), in reply: Madam Speaker, in closing this debate, I begin by answering a specific question from Mr Stevenson. The intention of the legislation is to ensure that there will be no smoking not only in malls but also in retail shops and business premises where goods and services are sold or delivered. That would take into account the whole range of malls. Certainly my intention in doing that was that, where a restaurant is in a mall, it would be considered as a restaurant and dealt with accordingly. I think that is worth clarification.
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