Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - I will make a brief contribution. Of course I support the legislation moving forward. I want to raise one or two issues at this stage. As I understand it, the legislation relates to the movement of dangerous goods over public property, over public roads, and public facilities but it does not cover movement of dangerous goods over private property and/or on private roads. I would like a little bit of clarity on that as to whether or not I am interpreting in the right way.

In this State, and I suspect in many of the other States, we have many private roads that are controlled by different organisations - Forestry have private roads, logging contractors have private roads - and I am just wondering whether or not it does go to cover those areas, Madam President. I would like some advice in relation to that.

In the current arrangements relative to the policing of this act, the responsibility falls to Workplace Standards, as has already been said. I am not quite sure how Workplace Standards really cope with the amount of work that they have. I would say, Madam President, they are probably one of the most over-worked departments in this State. Every time you see these people they are running from one place to another. I often have a discussion with them. They make it very clear that they are pressured to keep up and to do some of the things they are required to do. What I would see here, unfortunately, is that Workplace Standards will probably do what they are doing in many other cases, that is, being very reactive and not really proactive in their responsibilities. I do not know whether or not that is the right way for policing or responsibilities to be done in regard to such important legislation.

I think they will be waiting for complaints to come in and/or they will be reacting to information that they might get because they are a very much overworked department. I feel for them and I have often said that to them.

Regarding authorised officers under this bill, the Workplace Standards personnel and police are authorised officers as well, and there could well be others. They have fairly awesome powers and it has been referred to by the member for Mersey already that they have the authority to search places under certain conditions and without warrants in some conditions and they have the authority to use reasonable force to do that as well. A lot of people would think only police would be able to exercise these powers but that is not the case under this bill; an authorised officer has the right to use a reasonable amount of force to carry out some of the functions that they are entitled or obliged to undertake. So we do need to be very careful.

The other matter I want to mention at this stage, Madam President, is the one of extra cost. The Leader mentions that and it is referred to in the second reading speech that there is likely to be an extra cost on a number of the transportation companies and organisations and people carrying out the movement of dangerous goods. So my question to the Leader is, and I suspect it has been done, have all those people who will be impacted by this legislation been consulted? If they have been consulted, what was their reaction to it; what have they said about it and what have they indicated about the cost that might occur to them? Their costs are normally pushed back to somebody else to pick up at the end of the day.

I think a major part of this is to ensure that they were at least consulted and if not I would have some concerns. I did ask one operator what their position was and he said that he knew very little about it. He was not aware of what was happening. Has wide consultation in this process taken place?

There are some other issues, Madam President, that I will refer to during the Committee stage.