Page 482 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 21 February 2012
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With regard to the introduction of a public register of offences, the Greens support the move to make more information available to consumers. New South Wales has gone a step further than what is proposed for the ACT, in that New South Wales also has a public register of fines. We queried ACT Health as to why the ACT government bill did not include this kind of register. ACT Health noted that registered offences were more serious than fines and were the manner in which threats to public safety were responded to. Fines traditionally were for less serious matters which did not pose a reasonable threat to food safety.
ACT Health also noted that it had not been able to issue fines in the past, as the relevant laws did not prescribe strict liability offences. This is something which is being corrected through schedule 1 of the bill, which seeks to harmonise the Food Act with the Criminal Code. Once strict liability offences have been established in the legislation, ACT Health will be able to issue guidelines about fines and put them into practice when necessary. We expect it will be a useful regulatory tool for food safety inspectors.
I would just like to refer briefly to last year’s Auditor-General’s report into the management of food safety. While ACT Health was able to meet the bottom line when it came to containing threats to public safety, there were issues in maintaining a regular number of basic site inspections and conducting record keeping. Like many other government services, prevention strategies are minimised when staff have to work with minimal resources and respond to emergencies.
The Auditor-General went on to explain that the reason for this was ACT Health’s difficulties in retaining staff and a redirection of existing personnel towards other urgent issues. There simply were not enough food safety inspectors available to maintain regular inspections. ACT Health noted to us in the briefing that it has sought to address this problem by quarantining food safety inspectors from other work, and this seems like a good approach to address these issues.
The program for scores on doors is not in the current bill. The Greens would like to see a system established in which members of the public are able to see how well a food provider tested at their last food safety inspection. Such a system will reward those businesses who do the right thing and identify to the public those that do not. I do understand that some businesses have raised concerns about a scores on doors program. Scores on doors has, however, been implemented already in a number of jurisdictions, both overseas and in Australia, and we can learn from their experiences about how to develop a system which is fair to both businesses and consumers.
Again, we do very much believe that this would be a good program which we should have in the ACT. KPMG is currently drafting a regulatory impact statement on the matter, and we look forward to seeing its release. So just to reiterate, the ACT Greens will support the bill today.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Territory and Municipal Services) (11.29), in reply: I thank members for their contributions to the debate. I am pleased to see that the Legislative Assembly will be
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