Fitzsimons Jeanette: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:613;Page:10129] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 No one could possibly disagree with the purpose of this bill. It is clearly in everybody’s interests to facilitate the smooth transfer of hazardous substances from the transitional controls to the new regime and it is clearly beneficial to enable the authority to assign cost-effective controls to hazardous substances. So the Greens will be supporting this bill going to the Education and Science Committee. We believe there are a number of technical issues about the bill that need careful scrutiny at the select committee but at this stage we are supporting it. 
We are not however supporting the February reporting date. That given the summer break—even given a very modest summer break—gives us less than 2 months to get the bill back to the House. That means that either the phase of public consultation will be severely truncated or the select committee will have to work overtime at the end of January in order to do a decent job and it seems to me that neither of those are entirely reasonable things to expect. With a bill like this there are a great many users out there and a great many safety authorities and councils—all of which have an interest in the management of hazardous substances. We believe that they ought to have an appropriate time in which to make their submissions and have them properly considered by the committee. We do not believe that allowing committees to sit all week when the House is sitting and when it is not makes up for the lack of elapsed time from the closing of submissions until the reporting back. 
We support a case by case consideration of hazardous substances and the imposition of controls on a case by case basis. It is interesting to draw a comparison between hazardous substances and new organisms—where we do not support a case by case assessment of release—because there is an underlying unpredictability and risk running through all genetically engineered organisms that means they should not be let out of the laboratory at all. With hazardous substances however there is no such underlying risk. They are all subject to quite different risk assessments and we support those being done on a case by case basis. 
It is sensible to allow controls to be put on the use of hazardous substances. I understand that the reconsideration of 1080 poison has been deferred until that tool is available because there may well be some places where it should not be used and other places where it is perfectly appropriate. It is good if the Environmental Risk Management Authority has the flexibility to consider it carefully. 
There are five issues I think the select committee needs to look at in relation to this bill. The first one is cost-effective controls. Nobody could object to the idea that controls must be as cost effective as possible for both the authority and for industry but I do not believe that the bill at the moment makes it clear enough that cost effectiveness is still subject to the overall goal of the legislation which is the protection of health and the environment. If it is not all that cost effective to protect health and the environment it does not mean we should throw away the primary goal. 
Secondly there needs I think to be some limit now on the transitional period which is still totally open-ended. I think everyone is very keen to see us get through the transitional period for hazardous substances and fully into the new regime. The transitional period should not be allowed to go on for ever. 
Thirdly we need to look at the concept of rapid assessment. It is already well established under the Act for other matters. Certainly I would like to hear how “similar” will be defined. Two chemical substances with only one atom’s difference in their chemical formulation can be vastly different. I do not think that that is what “similar” is meant to indicate but I would be very interested to hear what definition the authority intends to use in interpreting it so that we do not inadvertently allow things through the net that should not get through. 
Fourthly the Minister of Defence and defence activities are exempt from the Act. I think we need to look at whether that is an historical anachronism we need to fix. There may be some good reasons in a few cases but I think a general exemption for the Minister of Defence is surely no longer warranted. That exemption needs to be reviewed—if not in this bill then at some stage soon. 
Finally I think the select committee will need to look carefully at the delegation powers and restrictions on the delegation powers so that decisions are made by people who are properly qualified in a properly accountable way with public scrutiny. Having said that I say to the House that the Greens support the bill at this stage.