Page 897 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2016
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Wales government. This issue is—and I agree with Mr Hanson on this point—big and important, but it is too big and too important for it not to be reviewed in its entirety and with rigour. Arbitrarily excising the commonwealth’s role in this matter would reveal only half of the story, and it would leave affected residents and the wider Canberra community severely short changed.
Members will, of course, recall the crisis faced by our city in the first half of 2014 as home owners responded to the letter from the Work Safety Commissioner of 18 February 2014 suggesting that they have asbestos testing conducted inside their homes. It emerged that there was sometimes very significant contamination inside houses remediated in the original program conducted in the early 1990s.
The ACT government responded quickly in establishing the asbestos response task force to oversee a program of emergency assistance, information provision and support and to develop advice on a long-term solution to what was and remains an unprecedented and complicated health, social, practical and, of course, financial issue. The task force provided its advice in August 2014 in a report which makes very plain the history of this issue. In September 2014 the government sought financial assistance in keeping with the memorandum of understanding with the commonwealth government that was signed during the original removal program.
At the end of October the commonwealth government announced—not to us but to the media—that it had reneged on that MOU and would offer a loan to the territory. The ACT government nevertheless decided to implement its loose-fill asbestos insulation eradication scheme—as all have acknowledged, an unprecedented undertaking in the territory’s history, and one that comes at a very significant financial cost, but one that is absolutely necessary to protect the health of our residents and to finally put an end to this cross-generational toxic legacy.
Why such a significant step was necessary and why a full and non-time-limited examination is so necessary can be traced back to the late 1960s in the advice provided to the commonwealth that, and I quote:
It is considered desirable that D Jansen and Company Pty Ltd should be dissuaded, or even prevented, if possible, from using asbestos fluff as insulation material in houses. Not only are men being unnecessarily exposed to a harmful substance in the course of their work, which is against best public health practices, but there is some evidence that community exposure to asbestos dust is undesirable.
It is a tragic fact of history that this advice from the Acting Director of the ACT Health Services Branch of the then commonwealth Department of Health was not heeded.
Any examination of how we arrived at this point must also be informed by a proper understanding of the evolving state of knowledge, over 50 years now, about the danger of asbestos. Through the 1970s raw loose asbestos was installed in around 1,100 houses across 56 suburbs. In the late 1980s there were major removal programs for other forms of asbestos in public buildings like the National Library. The issue intersects with debates about self-government for the ACT.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video