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For those interested in the recreational mixed gas saga in Australia and New 
Zealand.

The following is an extract from a speech by Santo Santoro, MLA. Deputy Leader 
of the QLD Liberal Party and Shadow Mininster for Employment, Training and 
Industrial Relations in the QLD Legislative Assembly on 31 March 1995.

"A recent development in recreational diving internationally has been the use 
of a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, known as nitrox, where the oxygen content 
of the compressed gases may be as high as 40 per cent compared with the ambient 
21 per cent.  All other aspects of the dive being equal, that mixture, with its 
lower nitrogen content, reduces the potential for bends.  Obviously, that new 
development has the capacity to make recreational diving at conventional depths 
a much safer activity and. therefore, it is to be welcomed.  The growing body 
of evidence from overseas is that, at conventional recreational diving depths 
of 20 metres and less, the use of nitrox dramatically reduces the potential for 
people to get the bends.  Most divers would have consumed all the compressed 
gases well before they reached a dive duration, which at those sorts of depths 
could put them at risk.  It is, therefore, somewhat disturbing that the company 
that sought to introduce mixed gas diving to Queensland has, prima facie, 
received a very tough time at the hands of the workplace Health and Safety 
Unit.  It is my understanding that the opposition that this company met in 
seeking to introduce nitrox diving was based on an erroneous view within the 
Workplace Health and Safety Unit that the treatment for nitrox bends victims 
was somewhat significiantly different from the treatment required for bends 
caused by conventional compressed air and that this resistance remained in 
place long after the department became aware of evidence to the contrary from 
eminient American and British authorities.

I understand that a draft code of practice that is now under consideration for 
the conduct of nitrox diving in Queensland acknowledges the fact that treatment 
of the bends brought about by divers breathing nitrox is only marginally 
different from the treatment of bends brought about by divers breathing 
conventional compressed air, and that we are now likely to see the development 
of mixed gas recreational diving in this State.  However, I believe that the 
Minister and the department will have to give strong consideration to what is 
likely to develop as a claim against the Government for compensation over the 
long period of what appears to have been obstruction for the compnay wishing to 
establish the industry here based largely, as I understand it, on second-hand 
and inadequate information from New South Wales"

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