Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Thank you, Mr President. Of course, the Greens support this bill without amendment. I want to commend the work of my colleague in the lower House, Helen Burnet, who so ably took this bill through us with full support in the House of Assembly. It is the right of everyone and we discussed this yesterday to go to work and to be safe. We have evolved.
We do not knowingly expose workers to the kinds of toxic carcinogenic substances like asbestos anymore, but everyone here knows that there are plenty of old Tasmanian homes that still contain a lot of asbestos. One of the issues that we had when I was minister for housing is that quite a lot of the Homes Tasmania – then Housing Tasmania – stock has asbestos in it. It is an ongoing and significant problem. The best thing to do, apart from safely removing asbestos in a regulated way, is to not disturb it. There are still to this day many Tasmanian homes which contain toxic and potentially lethal asbestos. This is why the provision in this legislation that allows for funds from the Asbestos Compensation Fund to be used for professional training and public education is so important. Plenty of us have taken part in bodgy home renovations or done a bit of work around the place without necessarily knowing that we are potentially coming into contact with an extraordinarily lethal and slow‑moving poison.
Members of a certain age – we are not all of that age in here, but I am – will remember the story of the Wittenoom disaster. There was a Four Corners ABC investigation that showed Australians what we did to a whole cohort of workers at the James Hardie Asbestos Mine in Wittenoom in Western Australia. We saw another group of people who are potentially impacted by asbestos, the secondary contamination of the partners and children of the Wittenoom workers, or other people who have worked in industries where they are exposed to asbestos. In Wittenoom what happened is that, depending on the weather, the fibres from the mine would blow across that little town and onto people’s clothes, the children’s clothes. It was in the water. It was everywhere. When you look back, employment at Wittenoom mine at that time was effectively a death sentence for those workers.
We need safer workplaces. For example, something I have talked about in here before is that we are a little way behind and we need to be conscious of making sure that the air we breathe in our workplaces is safe. We do not just have to worry about COVID, measles is on the rise. I read with horror a few days ago that there is a new clade of monkey pox which is making its way through African nations. There is the H1N1 bird flu virus, which is ravaging workers in dairy and chicken farms in the United States. There is a whole range of potential risks to people in their workplace. In terms of airborne pathogens and airborne substances, we need to have the same emphasis on clean air that we have had on clean water. We need to be making sure that our buildings have good ventilation, that we are retrofitting buildings, and that we have got filtration systems in place.
The modern trend is towards constructing large complexes without windows. Parliament Square is a fantastic example of a building that looks modern, but is not really, because we are all in that building breathing old air. We really need to have a strong focus on clean air. It is a fantastic job‑generating opportunity, apart from the fact that it will save lives and protect vulnerable people and children.
This bill addresses an issue where, if the medical panel disagrees with the opinion of an impairment assessor, they are only able to refer to another impairment assessor. There was no mechanism for the panel to move past that, other than go to another impairment assessor. It extends the claim eligibility for claimants and family members to costs in relation to support services. It enables the tribunal to make alternative apportionment of claims to family members other than those according to the standard provisions under the act, if a family member is aggrieved by that apportionment, it requires the Asbestos Compensation Commissioner to pay the claimant’s review costs when a claimant is successful and an error of law is made by the medical panel. It allows for funds from the Asbestos Compensation Fund to be used for professional training and public education. It absolves a claimant from the responsibility to repay funds their compensation is incorrectly calculated.
As the member for McIntyre has said, this bill has come about as a result of the ability to watch an act in practice, the Asbestos Related Diseases Occupational Exposure Compensation Act, and to wisely adjust that legislative framework when issues are identified. It seems, although we are only now dealing with two outstanding recommendations from the 2017 review, which is now seven years ago, it does seem like following the 2022 review, it became a reasonably efficient process to update this legislation.
I do hope the government has a look at the issue of secondary exposure for people who might not have become ill as a result of being in a workplace where they were exposed to asbestos, but being in the vicinity of, or living with someone who brings asbestos home. When I was a young journalist at Channel 7 current affairs in Brisbane, one of the first interviews I did was with a man who was probably in his late forties. He had worked in a trade. It was the first time I understood what the word Mesothelioma meant. This was at a time when this former worker had no access to compensation. We are talking here about more than 35 years ago. No access to compensation, no support, dying. He was clearly dying, apart from having his family around him, a death unacknowledged by government and law.
It is good, that we have a much better understanding of the impact of asbestos on the human body. That we now have laws that you cannot put asbestos into a building anymore. We have pretty robust regulatory processes for how you remove asbestos from a building or a construction site. We have come a long way and we are making further progress today. This is a good bill, and I am very happy to support it without amendment.
