Page 2042 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 25 October 1989
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the resources of his department and the hospitals for any member of the Canberra community who felt concerned and had a health problem related to fluoride going back into the water and who presented himself to one of the medical or hospital centres within the ACT to seek treatment.
I am not quite sure whether it is appropriate - maybe it is - for the Health Minister to consider the possibility along the lines suggested by my colleague Dr Kinloch, that, for those who are not in a position to afford the costs of what is considered by their doctor and others to be a necessary requirement for their health, the Health Minister may make available on the basis of need the necessary requirements for those persons to receive that sort of assistance to remove the fluoride from the water, fluoride that the doctor has certified is injurious to their health. That is basically all I propose to say on this matter. I think it is important for Mr Berry, having given that undertaking, to reiterate it in this debate.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister) (11.43): I will be very brief also. The Government opposes this motion and has three basic grounds for doing so. The first ground is that the motion proposes to provide water filters to any householder or individual who asks for them. It is not costed, nor does it contain any genuine concern for social justice because it suggests that water filters would be provided to households regardless of the ability to pay for them. It is an open-ended kind of subsidy where we have absolutely no control over what it might cost and absolutely no control over the social justice provisions that that subsidy should go to people who need it the most. So it is a silly suggestion from that point of view.
As other members have said, it begs the question of the inquiry that the Assembly does have under way about the merits or otherwise of adding fluoride to the water supply. To pre-empt the inquiry in that way is to cast aspersions upon the objectivity of the people engaged on that committee, and I find that quite objectionable.
I find it also a provocative motion in many ways. It seeks to prolong the debate on fluoride when I think it really has been done to death. To seek to raise it in this way, in a way which is not costed, casting aspersions on the committee that is examining the matter, is really just outright mischievous and we oppose it.
MR DUBY (11.44): Mr Speaker, I agree with some of the comments the Chief Minister made. I think the fluoride issue has been, as she said, done to death. It has been properly dealt with in this Assembly over a number of hours and the fact is that we have the committee of inquiry that is going to be looking into the matter of fluoridation of the water. On that basis and on the basis of the cost factors involved, we cannot support this motion for provision of water purifiers to the community, at a cost to the Government.
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