Alexander Marc: Smoke-free Environments (Exemptions) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Alexander Marc: Smoke-free Environments (Exemptions) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 This bill brought forward by the ACT member Muriel Newman is a step in the right direction. It adds back to the debate a bit of balance about freedom of choice and particularly about reaffirming property rights. Of the members of this Parliament I am probably the only one who has run hospitality venues. I have had my own business in that regard and we were smoke-free. We chose to be smoke-free prior to the enactment of the principal Act because that was obviously the demand of our customers—not for any other reason. The point was that we did not need the nanny State to tell us what to do. We chose to do that of our own accord because we were responding to the market. 
Unfortunately one of the reasons why the original legislation—now the principal Act—was supported and pushed through at the end of last year was supposedly the pretext of protecting employees. It was not supposed to be the pretext of protecting the health of customers who could choose whether to come in. The problem is that at many hospitality venues there are no employees but literally a husband and wife team both of whom may smoke. There are no employees to take into consideration yet those people are still penalised by not being able to do what they want to do in the privacy of their own investment. And that brings me to a very important point. Individuals or groups of individuals borrow money or put money together to open up a hospitality venue and then they are told by the nanny State that in the privacy of their own investment their own property they may not do certain things such as smoke. However if a person goes out and rapes somebody or murders somebody and then goes to prison that person can smoke and the employees of the prison—and there are a number of them—do not get the same special regard paid to their health and safety. In other words those people who are Government employees living off the taxpayer are expected to endure billows of smoke yet people who choose to go into a private property which is a place of business are discriminated against. I do not think that that is fair at all. There is no balance. 
If this is a health issue though why stop at smoking? Why do we not pursue a quality of air standard? The effect on air quality is one of the reasons why we got rid of asbestos as somebody mentioned earlier. But there are other pollutants in the air as well. So what are we saying? We are saying that certain types of pollutants are not OK and that other types we simply do not legislate against. Would not the best thing be to legislate for a quality of air standard and be done with it? That would protect customers employees and the employer as well. I do not understand why prisons are given a separate status from that of private property. Why should the Government be an exception to its own do-gooder legislation? In other words why does the Government shove its ideology down the throats of individual citizens but we as a Government—not me personally of course because I want to have very little to do with that Government— 
Nandor Tanczos 
: Except for your supply and confidence. 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: Well we are living up to our agreement but I tell members right now that my supply of confidence has run bloody short. It seems to me that the Government is giving itself an exception to a rule that it is trying to apply to individual rights. The Government is saying that it is somehow beyond a respect for property rights and that it cares for its own employees less than for others as second-class employees. But it is trying to shove its ideology down the throats of people who want to carry on their business unhindered by Government interference in the privacy of their own investment. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. 
One of the things we need to do is to open up the wider issue that the bill addresses which is the right of people to congregate and do what they want to do. In a lot of rural areas pubs are suffering dramatically. Employees are losing their jobs and communities in the rural environment have to seek alternative social hubs. One of the alternatives that is happening is that people’s garages are being turned into de facto pubs. People go there and put some money into the kitty and those places are becoming de facto pubs. So all that this Government has really done is to take away legitimate business and drive legitimate users of hospitality underground. That is fundamentally wrong.