Page 4774 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
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In the engagement process the community made it clear that they considered burial, cremation and interment services to be essential public services that should meet the needs of everyone in the community. The bill recognises that operators of cemetery and crematorium facilities should be appropriately regulated. This bill establishes a mandatory licensing framework for cemeteries and crematoria with the ability to issue conditions of a licence and in extreme circumstance suspend or cancel a licence. This framework is not intended to be overly onerous to operators, and to reduce regulatory burden an operator will have to apply for a licence only once, which will then be issued for an unlimited time.
While the government has been reviewing the laws that govern our cemeteries and crematoria a deeply upsetting case of lost ashes has been raised by my colleague Ms Tara Cheyne. The case relates to children’s ashes interred in a wall at Canberra’s private crematorium. The wall was relocated in 1992 and during that process the ashes of some children were lost. The government took this matter very seriously and commissioned an independent audit to establish what happened.
This audit has been completed and the report has since been publicly released. During the audit process the missing remains of one child were recovered. Sadly, however, the ashes of Mr Eddy Mol’s son, Timothy—Mr Mol being the courageous citizen who first brought this matter to our attention—were not recovered. This is deeply upsetting and should never happen.
Following the independent investigation into the lost ashes at Norwood Park crematorium we are making changes to the law to ensure that this never happens again. Under the bill the perpetual 10-year arrangement for the interment of cremated remains will remain. This means that, once interred, the interment lasts forever. To ensure that interred remains cannot be removed and lost in the future the bill specifies that the only way that cremated remains can be disinterred is by the written request of the family or approval of the regulator.
This means that if an operator ever wanted to, for example, move a wall, they would have to submit an application to the regulator to do so and demonstrate how the disinterment would occur. The regulator can only approve an application for disinterment if they are satisfied that the cremated remains will be handled with care and are not at risk of being mismanaged or lost. Offences are in place if an operator does not comply with these requirements under the bill.
The report of the independent audit into the lost ashes highlighted additional operational issues at Norwood Park, including a lack of formalised policies or procedures. The bill also introduces a framework to deal with this and will require all operators to keep and maintain standard operating procedures for all key processes, including burials, interments, disinterments and the collection of cremated remains. These procedures must be reviewed at least once every two years. If an operator does not comply with these requirements, they can face penalties.
The bill also creates a flexible framework to meet the needs of Canberrans into the future. We know that new technologies are emerging and becoming more popular in this space, including technologies like alkaline hydrolysis, also known as water
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