Page 1499 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 27 September 1989
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does not accord with my view of the way that the world operates and I refuse to accept it. In fact, it debases and denigrates the bona fides and integrity of large sections of our community, those sorts of people who have been working for many years in this area, who have seen with their own eyes the effect of the addition of fluoride to our water supply and who say, in all honesty, that they believe that it is a positive contribution to our health system.
I see this Bill as being basically irrational, anti-scientific and even primitive. I hope that our successors in this place in 10 years' time, or whatever time it might take, will have the integrity to acknowledge that in passing this Bill today we have made a mistake and will have the integrity and the honesty to reverse it.
MR MOORE (11.23): Let me start by saying that I think that I, of all the members of the Assembly here, have the most intense personal interest in this particular matter as I have children who are just entering the target years when fluoride is shown to be most important - the years from one to 12. My view is clear and is in line with the Residents Rally policy, that our water supply is not the place for fluoride.
First, let me take on the claim by the Labor Party, that what we require is a public debate on this. One of the reasons why I am most uneasy about a public debate on this particular issue is that it would be so totally unbalanced. On the one hand, the proponents of fluoride in the water are supported by the sugary foods industry - firms like Coca-Cola, Colonial Sugar Refining, Cadbury-Schweppes, Kellogg, and so on. They have access to astronomical amounts of money to which the anti-fluoride lobby does not have access. In other words, one part of that particular group would be able to run, for example, full page ads in the Canberra Times and influence things through the media in that way. Proponents of the other view would not have the same access to the media or the same access to people, and that in itself makes this a particularly unfair debate.
The Residents Rally is the only party that clearly stated its policy on fluoride in its policy summaries in the campaign and, of course, it is incumbent upon us to do what we can to ensure that our policies are implemented. That is what we are going to do. Our policy came about through looking at the research and looking at the facts and figures. Some of the points that have been raised by Mr Humphries do, of course, require further study.
Let me draw attention to one particular area of research and Mr Humphries' reliance upon the National Health and Medical Research Council. I quote from an article by Mark Diesendorf and Wendy Varney. It says:
Australia has also at least one home-grown Foundation with its own industrial links. In NSW,
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