Page 506 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 June 1989
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William Sound in Alaska to pay whatever it takes, even hundreds of millions of dollars perhaps, to clean up the mess and rectify the damage to the environment. There should properly be no limit to the amount of costs recoverable in those circumstances.
We fortunately do not face incidents of nearly that seriousness in the ACT, although I note there are several instances - - -
Mr Whalan: The oil tankers coming up Lake Burley Griffin.
MR HUMPHRIES: That is right. There are oil tankers, not necessarily in the water but certainly on the roads in and around the ACT. I have clippings before me here of various instances that have happened in recent days - one in particular of a rather large spill near Yass, which threatened to go into the Yass water supply. Those things are not unknown. We import, of course, all of our oil from outside the Territory. The legislation in New South Wales also proposes making a specific offence of conspiracy to pollute, and individuals in those circumstances could face very heavy sentences and fines.
Present laws in New South Wales stipulate that licences cannot be suspended. The New South Wales Government proposes to change that, so that indeed the Minister would have the power to suspend licences immediately where the circumstances warrant, where there has been what appears to be a deliberate attempt to breach the laws.
There is no appeal under this legislation against that suspension. The Supreme Court would also be empowered to freeze the assets of companies or individuals to stop them from siphoning off assets so that they would not be somehow unable to pay the fines, penalties and clean-up costs that the court might eventually impose. The State Pollution Control Commission would administer the new Act. It may be that even in the ACT we need to consider beefing up the powers of existing pollution watchdogs. The Act also would provide that offending companies could have their operating licences revoked and/or government contracts cut off. Of course, in the ACT that is more significant from the Federal Government's point of view than from ours. Nonetheless, that aspect of our negotiation and contractual rights with other companies would not necessarily be small enough to sneeze at.
In the Adelaide Advertiser of 7 June, a Mr Ian Ball wrote:
To live is to pollute, no matter how much care the individual takes in a personal code of do-goodism. Indeed science holds that a preternatural act of "pollution" was probably responsible for all life on earth.
Be that as it may, we have to pay today a much, much higher price than we paid in the past for our pollution. We can
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