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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 2690 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

five or six days in Sydney, we had 76 days of high levels of fine particle pollution, and that was with a month missing. Once again, we see a reluctance from Mr Smyth and arguments that do not hold weight.

Mr Rugendyke thinks the industry has not been consulted. Mr Corbell made it quite clear that there are members of the industry who are acting responsibly and who are supportive of this legislation. Whenever you have voluntary regulation in industry, those members of the industry who are responsible and observe the standards start lobbying for mandatory regulation. They are going to be disadvantaged when other members of the same industry refuse to take that responsibility and therefore quite often can produce their product more cheaply.

What are we trying to achieve? We are trying to achieve a better standard in the industry, and those members of the industry who are responsible support that. I would have thought the minister for the environment would be interested in that, when he likes to open all sorts of events supposedly dealing with endangered ecological communities in our region.

Mr Smyth also said our legislation will stop the fly-by-nighters. As I understand it, it will because it is about the supply of wood in the ACT. Anyone who supplies wood in the ACT will have to have an authorisation. We have dealt with that in the legislation.

I find it very interesting that Mr Smyth is so reluctant to deal with this motion. We are not banning anything. All we are asking for is greater monitoring and a greater concern about members of our community who are being impacted upon by fine particle pollution. We are asking for an improvement in monitoring and understanding of the impacts. I cannot see why a minister who has a responsibility in this area-Mr Moore should have been here to speak-would not support that.

The legislation is exactly what Mr Smyth has already supported through his voluntary code of practice. It makes it mandatory. It has the support of those members of the industry who are being responsible. It is very disappointing that Mr Smyth is refusing to take that on. I think it is about the ideological commitment to not having these sorts of regulations imposed on industry, regardless of the benefits to the environment or to the health of people in the ACT. It is probably also about costs. They do not want to have any more costs to deal with in government agencies if they can avoid it.

Question put:

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