Page 4323 - Week 13 - Thursday, 4 December 2014
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My eight-year-old was helping me in the roof of my house. We have now been advised that we have had high levels of exposure and I will now sit for the next 30 years to know whether my eight-year-old will make her 40th birthday.
If it is that deadly then why are these people still in these homes? The committee thought long and hard about this. You can see there are a number of recommendations that say these people need to be aware of the danger. It needs to be given to them in writing; it needs to be abundantly clear what it means for them.
The concern of the committee was that, for some of the older folk in particular, the actual move may be more disruptive to their lives than staying where they are. The older couple in their 80s who came before the committee did not even get into the committee room before they broke down. They were waiting in the little foyer between committee room 1 and the Kiribati room, and the wife was in tears. This is her home; this is their entire world. It was one of those incredibly sad but absolutely delightful moments when the guy said, “Check this out, Brendan. I went to Lowes this morning and I bought this tie. I didn’t have a tie.” He spent 25 bucks on a tie so that he could come and impress the committee on their need.
You were there, Madam Deputy Speaker; we pondered this long and hard: how do you accommodate that need? They said, “Look, we’re old; we’re not particularly concerned about the health risk.” The committee take into account that in servicing them—if an ambulance had to turn up, if there was a fire or if a health worker turned up––there are dilemmas and difficulties here. Surely, it is not beyond the ken of a city as smart as Canberra to come to some arrangement. The report says “exceptional circumstances”. Just because you want to stay, we all agree that that is not on. But where the damage may be greater than the potential risk from contracting an asbestos-related disease then I would hope there is some consideration of that.
I see the government has mainly ruled it out. I think it is hasty. I get the principle; I understand it. Asbestos is deadly. We all now know that the asbestos that was foisted on us in the 30s, 40s and 50s will have an impact for years to come. But for some of these people these are their last years, anyway.
Mr Rattenbury raised the issue of the inquiry. The recommendations about the inquiry are 58, 59 and 60. He said, “We’ve got to get the right inquiry, the appropriate inquiry.” It has to be an inquiry that we can conduct under our legislation. We cannot investigate the federal government. We cannot do that; our legislation does not allow it. What we can do is investigate what happened post self-government. There is a stepped-through arrangement in what the committee recommended with the board of inquiry. It starts with rec 58, which says:
The Committee recommends that an ACT Board of inquiry be constituted, pursuant to the Inquiries Act, to investigate the full history of the Mr Fluffy legacy. The Board … should report by 1 March 2016.
If it was formed today, that is about 16 months. If it is formed in March, call it a year. If it is formed in July, it is eight months. The government’s response is that it will need at least two years and it could easily cost up to $10 million. I would like to see how they came to those conclusions and those costings.
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