Page 2839 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 September 1994
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MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (9.05), in reply: Mr Acting Speaker, there are two issues for debate this evening. I think there is unanimity on one, and that is that there should be an amendment to the existing package to ensure that the AAT can review the merits of the decision by asking: Was the Building Code of Australia correctly applied? That was always our intention. A ruling was made in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal that, in fact, all that could be considered on appeal was: Did the decision maker correctly apply the number that the Fire Commissioner came up with? If the Fire Commissioner said 322 and the liquor licensee said 350 or 300, you could appeal against that; but you could not appeal on the basis of whether the 322 was correctly applied. That was incorrect and we should have fixed that, and we said very quickly that we would.
At the time, though, there was considerable industry opposition to the principle that the Building Code of Australia should strictly apply. Industry very loudly said, "This is unfair. There should be more flexibility. We have tougher laws in Canberra than in other parts of Australia". I said at the time - Mrs Carnell correctly quoted me - in October last year, "We have no set Government views on this. This is not a major issue of party politics. We will look at it". I did say that. We did look at it, and the advice that we got from police and from fire authorities was not to change the current method of calculation.
I made public - I am not sure whether I tabled it in this place, but I am happy to do so - advice that I received in November of last year from Mr Dawson which referred to the amendments. The amendments were made in June, so this advice in November is really looking at the first few months of operation. He says:
Since the introduction of the legislation there has been a noticeable improvement in the behaviour of patrons. Police believe the reason for this is that patrons are more comfortable and there is less jostling. Similarly, there has been a noticeable decline in the number of disturbances, inside premises, reported to police. The legislation has also allowed police better access to licensed premises to monitor the adherence to liquor licensing laws, and the safety and behaviour of patrons, as well as attend incidents.
He continues:
As a result of the legislation, patrons of licensed premises now have a safer environment and the threat of a major incident, which could injure or maim a large number of persons, has been significantly reduced. It is my view that the occupancy loading limits are appropriately set and should remain.
The advice of the Fire Commissioner is the same. I will table both of those. I have certainly shown them to the Opposition in the past. The Fire Commissioner in May of this year again says that it is an adequate regime.
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