House Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs
Inquiry into the draft Disability (Access to Premises - Buildings) Standards Please note: the information on this page is also available in PDF format. To view the information in this file format you will need Adobe Acrobat® PDF Reader, which can be downloaded free of charge from Adobe®. For more information see Accessing files.

2 April 2009

Organisations to Comment on Public Building Access for People with Disabilities Public hearing in Brisbane on 3 April 2009

The House Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee will hear from the Society of Fire Safety as well as other community organisations and stakeholders at a public hearing in Brisbane on Friday. The hearing is the sixth held by the Committee as part of its inquiry into disabled access to public buildings.

The safe evacuation of people with disability from a building in an emergency has been a reoccurring issue through out the Committee’s Inquiry. This is particularly important in multi-storey high rise buildings.

The submission received from the Society of Fire Safety suggests that if the draft Premises Standards reflected communication expectations of safe egress from buildings for people with disability then the Australian construction industry might be motivated to develop suitable design solutions.

The Society of Fire Safety submit that studies from the United States prompted by the ‘the experience of the 1993 World Trade Centre Bombing and the 2001 aerial attack have shown the tradition “do not use the lift in case of fire” approach may need to be changed.’

The Committee Chair, Mr Mark Dreyfus QC MP said, “Emergency evacuation of people with a disability is an important issue. The Committee is looking forward to hearing what options may be available to address the absence of emergency egress provisions in the Standards

Details of the hearing:

Date: Friday 3 April 2009
Time: 9:00 am – 1:15 pm
Location: Auditorium 1, Department of Primary Industries
80 Ann Street, Brisbane

9.00 am – Welfare Rights Centre Queensland
9.45 am – Cairns Community Legal Centre
10.30 am – Armidale Dumaresq Council
11.00 am – Break
11.10 am – Ms Rita Struthers and Mr Daniel Bedwell
11.45 am – Society of Fire Safety, Queensland Chapter
12.15 pm – Spinal Injuries Association
12.45 pm – Mr Max Murray

Full program details are available.

Members of the public are welcome to attend the public hearing.

Accessibility: Please contact the Committee Secretariat for information about accessibility at public hearings.

Additional media information

For interview, contact the Committee Chair, Mr Mark Dreyfus QC, MP on (02) 6277 4305 (Canberra) or in his electorate on (03) 9769 1955; or Mr Dreyfus’ media adviser, Tim Lisle-Williams on 0431 178 280.

For background information, including the full terms of reference, please visit the inquiry website at www.aph.gov.au/laca or contact the Committee Secretariat on (02) 6277 2358.

Related link

• Printable version of this media release (PDF 31KB)

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