ACV/GARDS organisation alerted the Federal Government and the Australian community to asbestos in crayons last year and asked ACCC and Border Force to investigate and track down all crayons from all suppliers and find out which ones in Australia contained asbestos and take action. We wanted a compulsory recall of all crayons and our government agencies in their wisdom gave us a voluntary recall. They said they posed only a “small risk” and we say if children put the crayons in their mouths and chew them then they are potentially exposing themselves to the ingestion of asbestos fibres. Wouldn’t it have been nice to think that the ACCC would have continued testing crayons that came into our country for a considerable time and not relied on any more “credible reports” from the community or else where to conduct testing – random tests on crayons coming in over the last 10 months would have been, we think, a sensible safe guard for our most precious and vulnerable little Aussies “Our Kids”.
This year we have seen all sorts of products coming into this country with asbestos in them – roof panels, cement fibre board panels, gaskets, brakes and many more products that haven’t been identified yet. This is a disgrace these products are getting past our border protection and into the Australian community. We need the Federal Government to do more in this space – we need to see prosecutions for violating the Australian law which incur large fines and maybe tougher laws to send a message that we mean business. We need the Australian Government to say anyone who thinks they are going to bring asbestos tainted products into this country could face jail time – there needs to be fairdinkum consequences for those who think they can ignore our laws and get away with just a pat on the hand. This is a carcinogen and it kills people – maybe not straight away, but who wants to play Russian Roulette with their life or the life of their loved ones. Get serious and deal with monumental problem – otherwise generations to come will suffer the fate of those who have gone before. All of this is preventable if you act.
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