Asbestolux
Tuesday, 03 August 2010 12:14
Matters of Public Interest - 03 Aug 2010
Asbestolux Dr FLEGG (Moggill—LNP) (12.13 pm):
Since I raised the issue of Asbestolux in schools, theQueensland public is now aware of what amounts to a new and serious health threat to children in our schools. This is no media beat-up nor a political scare campaign. Asbestolux is very nasty stuff indeed.What is Asbestolux? I will read from Queensland’s occupational health and safety organisation’s information guide. It states—Samples of low density asbestos fibre board have shown it contains up to 70 per cent ... asbestos fibres—
almost pure asbestos—
- and is generally composed of brown asbestos ... and white asbestos ... in a calcium silicate plaster. The asbestos fibres are not bound in a cement matrix as with asbestos cement sheeting.Low density asbestos fibre board is often soft and the pressure of a fingernail pushed into the surface can leave an indentation.
It goes on to say—...
release of airborne fibres can occur even with minor mechanical disturbance.
I will table that document from Workplace Health and Safety Queensland. Tabled paper: Workplace Health and Safety Queensland—Information Guide: Asbestos—Low density asbestos fibre board, version 0.1.
I was shocked at a recent estimates hearing to discover that the minister had not even heard of its common product name, Asbestolux. This is despite a report entitled Asbestolux sent to the Queensland government in December 2007 and the occupational health and safety information that I just read from.I called this a cover-up and a cover-up it is indeed that has put our children’s health at risk. This government was warned as long ago as 2007, yet it does not appear to have taken any action—at least until two years later when that workplace health and safety information was released. Inspection of schools only began in December 2009. How could it possibly take two years to react to a warning about a lethal substance in our schools?
Then what did Minister Wilson do? He released a press release that, for its first 16 paragraphs, says what a great job this government is doing in relation to asbestos in schools. But then in the 17th paragraph it refers to updating identification and removal procedures to allow for recent changes to classification of ‘a particular type of wall sheeting’. The product is not even named in the minister’s press release and is not even mentioned until page 2, paragraph 17. That is a cover-up. How much more outrageous does this make the minister’s previous statement that—
It is the principal’s responsibility to ensure the safety of students and staff, particularly when it comes to asbestos related issues.Any failure ... to fulfil those obligations will result in disciplinary action.
It is clearly the minister and the government who should be subject to disciplinary action after taking two years to act on warnings and then compounding the sin by being unable to even utter the name of this product in their press release when this dangerous asbestos discovery was made. My call to this government is to come clean and inform Queensland communities and, in particular, affected school communities that this substance is in their midst. This should not have been a role left to the Queensland opposition.
I am calling on the government to affix to every panel of this dangerous material in Queensland schools a warning sticker. We have seen time and time again accidents occur in relation to work done in schools right across this entire state when people have not realised what they were dealing with—and that was just asbestos sheeting. This is many, many times more dangerous.(Time expired)