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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Thursday, 12 February 2004) . . Page.. 331 ..

our citizens. Sometimes that requires additional work and additional thought, but it is something the government should be considering before it brings legislation to this Assembly. As I have said, we are happy to support this bill in principle, but have a number of fundamental concerns about some of the provisions within the Dangerous Substances Bill. I hope that the Assembly will agree that these provisions need to be substantially amended.

MRS CROSS (4.48): The Dangerous Substances Bill 2003 is an extremely complex and controversial piece of legislation but, in my mind, it is necessary in order to make the ACT a safer place in which to live and work. Before I speak to the substantive part of the bill, I would like to reiterate my concern at the government presenting a bill one week and expecting to have it debated in the next sitting week. This concern is heightened where the scrutiny of bills committee’s report on it is handed down on the Tuesday and we have the government’s response on the Wednesday of the sitting week that the bill is due to be debated.

My decision not to seek an adjournment of the debate on this bill should not be seen by the government as a precedent. The government should be giving members more time to digest all aspects of a piece of legislation, rather than attempting to rush it through. However, due to the relative urgency of this bill and the timely assistance provided by Ms Gallagher’s office, I am prepared to allow this bill to be debated today, although I understand that the minister now prefers that we debate the bill in principle and adjourn debate on the amendments.

The bill deals with two main issues—hazardous substances and dangerous goods—and seeks to combine the regulatory regimes of both. This has been the international and national approach in the legislative dealing with these issues. This bill will complement other pieces of legislation that regulate workplace safety, environmental protection, the handling of infectious or radioactive material, control of firearms and ammunition, drugs, and the transportation of dangerous goods. This legislation is most important. This entire legislative framework will ensure that the community is a much safer place in which to live and work.

This legislation puts into place, and expressly identifies, significant safety duties of persons handling, transporting, controlling, storing and dealing with dangerous substances. It should ensure that anybody having anything to do with dangerous substances undertakes their involvement with the utmost care, and with safety as a primary consideration. There are tough penalties for those who do not comply with these duties—and rightly so. The safety of the community and the individuals who comprise it needs to be the paramount priority when dealing with dangerous substances and their laws and regulations.

I am encouraged to see that failure to comply with the safety duties and the penalties these breaches lead to differ if it can be demonstrated that a person intentionally, recklessly or negligently failed to comply with the safety duties. This should ensure that a hairdresser who does not correctly store a container of a dangerous chemical does not face the same penalties as an owner of a manufacturing plant who undertakes to systematically disregard his safety duties in order to avoid the expenses associated with compliance.

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