Page 939 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 17 March 2010
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Australian standards, and include restricting solaria use to people over 18 and people with skin types other than very fair. The penalties for breaching licence conditions mirror the New South Wales model, an example being that if a person under the age of 18 is permitted to use a solarium, the owner faces penalties of up to $11,000 and loss of licence.
I note that, when introducing the regulations, Victoria and New South Wales both provided a 12-month phase-in process to ensure that operators had the time they needed to undertake the necessary training process. In New South Wales an online training package was made available to operators through the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency.
Given that the ACT is a smaller jurisdiction and we could probably make use of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency program, I have proposed that there be a phase-in process of up to six months, but have ultimately left it to the minister’s discretion to make it sooner if this can be applied.
When Victoria introduced this legislation, their regulatory impact statement made a few important predictions that I would like to reflect on.
Firstly, it expected that solarium use would reduce by about 50 per cent and that the reduction in the incidence of solarium-related skin cancer would be significantly more than 50 per cent because of the prohibition on solarium use by particularly vulnerable groups.
Between nine and 12 deaths from melanoma were expected to be prevented over 10 years. The overall benefit of the regulations was estimated at between $25 million and $56 million. In comparison, licensing costs were expected to amount to only $1.25 million. Solarium businesses were expected to incur a loss of revenue of up to $48 million over 10 years, but this cost must be regarded as a transfer in economic terms, as a loss of revenue would be balanced by increased consumer spending in other areas.
The Victorian regulatory impact statement also considered whether solarium employees should be licensed, as this approach was likely to yield some small additional benefits in terms of improved compliance with the requirements of the regulations. However, the regulatory impact statement found that overall licensing costs would be substantially greater, and result in a small net present value and a significantly smaller benefit-cost ratio than if they chose to just license the solaria owners. It is for these reasons that we have chosen not to license solaria operators but to focus on solarium owners.
We recognise that the Victorian situation is not wholly comparable to that of the ACT. We know our industry is much smaller. However, the anticipated benefits we could achieve here are worthy ones and, given the amount of time the ACT government has been aware of the impact of solaria radiation, we must bring ourselves to ask why the regulations were not adopted some time ago.
When the Victorian government consulted with the local solaria industry about the introduction of regulations, it received the industry’s general support. One of the
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