Page 835 - Week 03 - Thursday, 30 March 2006
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supervise minor tasks such as painting their bathroom walls. Likewise, a tradesperson, for instance, in the course of his or her daily work activities is unlikely to stop work to call in a licensed asbestos removalist to attend to minor maintenance or removal activities that would involve the disturbance or removal of a small amount of bonded asbestos.
The task force report advised that it was also unlikely that the homeowner or tradesperson would submit a building approval to have these minor works undertaken. As a consequence, the new measures proposed by this bill will exempt from the building approval process owners of both residential and commercial buildings undertaking minor maintenance activities such as low-speed or hand-drilling, painting or cleaning of bonded asbestos, provided the work is undertaken in accordance with an approved asbestos code of practice.
Similarly, the bill also proposes to exempt from the building approval process building work that involves handling less than 10 metres square of bonded asbestos. However, the bill proposes that those persons doing the work must be in a prescribed trade, service or maintenance occupation and hold a relevant asbestos qualification. The 10 metres square mentioned is an arbitrary amount that is being adopted by most jurisdictions as the acceptable upper limit for handling of bonded asbestos for these purposes but is intended to be sufficient to permit certain minor work incidental to a trade, service or maintenance activity such as retiling a bathroom. The bill now introduces a requirement that an asbestos removal control plan that addresses asbestos disturbance, handling and disposal and the safety of workers, occupants and others potentially subject to exposure, must accompany all applications for building approval for homes built prior to 1985.
In order to provide for codes of practice under which people are required to undertake minor maintenance work and other activities, the bill proposes that the Building Act allow the minister to approve in writing certain codes of practice. The purpose of the codes of practice may be to set out practices, standards and other matters about building work if the work involves the use, handling or disposal of asbestos. For example, the minister could determine that the code of practice for the safe removal of asbestos prepared and published by the commonwealth Office of the Australian Safety and Compensation Council may be an approved asbestos code for the purposes of the Building Act.
Those that are familiar with the current laws surrounding asbestos may have noticed the change in terminology I have used to describe it. Currently the Building Act refers to “stable” and “loose” asbestos. However, this bill proposes those terms be replaced by the terms “bonded” and “friable”, to more accurately describe the type and nature of the asbestos encountered and to align the Building Act and other acts to reflect the more contemporary industry-accepted terms.
As previously mentioned, the bill proposes a range of measures to address the licensing and training of construction and other occupations that handle asbestos on a regular basis. The bill proposes amendments to the Construction Occupations (Licensing) Act 2004 to separate asbestos work out of the current builders licensing regime and create a new occupation to cover the licensing of that work. The new occupation descriptor is “asbestos removalist” and, consistent with other licence classifications, the occupation classes are to be:
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