The threat of significant fines has done nothing to deter four of the remaining Mr Fluffy homeowners as they continue to resist WorkSafe ACT's order to obtain asbestos contamination reports.
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The regulator's latest effort to increase compliance even prompted one non-compliant homeowner, Lorraine Carvalho, to declare she would go to jail before spending another cent on "something that should never have happened".
WorkSafe sent officials to serve "improvement notices" on the homeowners in question on Thursday afternoon, giving them 14 days to obtain a report on the loose-fill asbestos on their properties or face fines of up to $16,000.
WorkSafe ACT commissioner Greg Jones previously outlined the penalties available to the ACT government in a letter to 11 non-compliant homeowners on June 20, at which time the maximum penalty was $15,000.
The value of penalty units increased in the ACT on July 1, meaning the maximum fine is now $1000 more.
Mr Jones said seven homeowners who received the June letter had now taken steps to become compliant.
He would not reveal the locations of the four homes that still did not have the required contamination reports, which include management plans for affected properties, but said they were "scattered across Canberra".
Mr Jones told The Canberra Times that since sending the June letter, WorkSafe had contacted or attempted to contact each of the affected homeowners "multiple times".
"We're not taking this action lightly," he said.
"Normally we wouldn't issue improvement notices to members of the community, but [the decision] is based on the community safety aspect. My primary concern is for visitors, tradespeople, emergency services - all these people who might need to visit these houses."
Mr Jones said contamination reports and ongoing management in line with the reports' requirements were critical to minimising the risk of exposure to asbestos.
Mrs Carvalho, who lives with husband Leo in Lyons, was not home when a WorkSafe inspector arrived to serve the improvement notice, but she later received it via email.
She said she would not comply with it, or pay any fine.
She said she was comfortable her home was safe after it was cleaned and several subsequent tests declared living areas were free of asbestos contamination, but if the ACT government wanted the report, it could pay for one.
Mrs Carvalho echoed recent comments by Mr Fluffy community expert and reference group chair Sue Packer, who said the whole crisis could have been avoided if the Commonwealth government had followed its health department's advice in the 1960s and stopped installations of the Mr Fluffy loose-fill asbestos insulation that was pumped into more than 1000 ACT homes.
"I'll go to jail if I have to before I pay anything more for something that should never have happened," Mrs Carvalho said.
"How many more times should we have to pay for these stuff-ups that weren't our fault?"
Mrs Carvalho said she and her husband had worked their whole lives to get what they had, and because they believed their property had been significantly undervalued, they had not joined the Mr Fluffy buyback and demolition scheme.
She said they were only asking for the government to give them what the property was worth, and to stop trying to make the victims of the Mr Fluffy saga pay more.
Asbestos contamination reports must be renewed every two years and each can cost more than $1000. Any remediation works required by the reports are an additional cost.
"To anybody who thinks we're crazy, just think about if you were on your deathbed and you couldn't set your family up because of this," Mrs Carvalho said.
"Everybody leaves things for their family and their children, but I've got nothing to give them because we put our money into this [property] and we can't get it back.
"How many people in that situation wouldn't do what we're doing now?"