House debates

Monday, 2 December 2019

Private Members' Business

National Asbestos Awareness Week

5:10 pm

Photo of Maria VamvakinouMaria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on this very important member's motion on National Asbestos Awareness Week moved by the member for Adelaide. In doing so, can I commend the members for Monash and Bendigo, who, as the co-chairs of Parliamentary Group on Asbestos Related Disease, do an exceptional job in continuing the tradition of raising awareness about the dangers of asbestos exposure. I also want to take this opportunity to associate myself with the comments made by the member for Monash in relation to former senator Lisa Singh, who, alongside the member for Monash, did an incredible amount of work in this place on raising awareness.

This year's theme for National Asbestos Awareness Week is 'Asbestos lurks in more places than you'd think', and is about the dangers that lurk in our homes. The truth is we do love a good do-it-yourself project. It's almost an Aussie way of life. I know, at my home, my husband likes to potter around the backyard and do things that he enjoys doing and that he doesn't necessarily need to engage a tradie to do for us. Home improvements are an important part of the Australian way of life. The possibility of asbestos lurking in every corner of our homes is something that we all need to be very much aware of.

Renovating one's home is also very popular in this country, and it has been for some time. When we renovated our home, the builders checked the house for asbestos and did find some panels in a part of the old shed at the back of our house. I was quite taken aback that I'd been living in a house for 10 years and I wasn't aware that there were asbestos panels in the shed. And of course, you start to worry about it: did we go anywhere near the panels and did we disturb them? But I was very impressed with the professional way in which the builders, adhering to a very strict code, actually moved that asbestos. We need to continue that vigilance and that tradition. According to the Australian government's Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency, one in three homes built between 1940 and 1990 is believed to contain asbestos. In some parts of the country, that can equate to one in every two homes, which is a large number of homes. Asbestos is also not just in homes. We're familiar with the fact that schools, universities and workplaces have asbestos.

Fifteen years ago, we banned the use of asbestos in Australia. However, as I said and as all other speakers have said, it's still present in our homes and in our workplaces, and, as the member for Makin referred to, it's still being imported into this country in products. I want to commend ASEA for choosing to focus on the potential for asbestos in residential environments in this year's National Asbestos Awareness Week. Even though the week officially ended yesterday, I think that we need to be dedicated every day of every week of the year to protecting Australians from unsuspecting access and exposure to hidden asbestos. An estimated 4,000 Australians will die annually from asbestos-related diseases. It is very important for us to keep our communities and our constituents as safe as possible from the dangers of asbestos, and this motion seeks to make that point very strongly. We know that asbestos is dangerous. Many colleagues have spoken about people that they know who have suffered and consequently lost their lives as a result of exposure to asbestos. The battle is never won. There will be more cases as we move forward into the future. We therefore need to continue to raise awareness, to talk about asbestos and to make sure that we don't drop the ball, so to speak.

It is important to note that, in someone's home—often our homes are our castles—it can be in unassuming places such as roofs, insulation, downpipes, walls, bathrooms, kitchens and laundries and under the tiles, carpet and lino. There is always a possibility that it is lurking in the pipes, the fuse boxes or the ventilation shafts and even outdoors like in sheds and fences and in small construction sites. There is always the possibility that you may be unwittingly exposed to asbestos. Therefore, I commend this motion to the Chamber. I congratulate the member for Adelaide for bringing it to the attention of the Chamber for discussion, and I thank all members who have spoken on the motion.

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