Page 4554 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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of action, I believe, belittles our committee system, about which I have spoken very positively on many occasions, and will continue to do so as long as they act that way. I think it is appropriate that this report be brought down in accordance with what the committee decides. At that point we can decide to argue with its finding and with its reasoning, if we so choose.
MR STEVENSON (6.00), in reply: Mr Wood spoke about people having cheap shots at the Assembly. It is not so much cheap shots I am concerned about; it is expensive ones. What we need to be concerned about is whether we will be held to have done the job correctly or otherwise. Mr Prowse made a point about the NHMRC. Perhaps there is something of relevance here that not many people in this Assembly would know. After the 1979 Victorian inquiry an advertisement was published in the newspaper calling the inquiry, on which it had three scientific members, a fraud. That stands today. No legal action was taken against those people who called that study, and hence the people on it, a fraud. Why that was, of course, is that it was a fraud. That is why no legal action was taken. I do not want this Assembly, the members in it, and certainly not the committee of which I am a member, to be held to be a fraud.
I did not raise this matter to make any point whatsoever about deliberations in the Assembly. Mr Wood brought that up. I was very careful to steer clear of all that. But, as he has brought it up, I will briefly make the point: indeed, the vote was against my recommendation that we do our job correctly simply by taking the time. It had nothing whatsoever to do with what we found. There was nothing of that. All I said was, "Let us take the time to wait for the study". Regardless of some statements that Mr Wood read out from the NHMRC, I think it should be clearly known by every member here that the National Cancer Institute US Congress required study in America showed cancer. That is what it showed. It showed cancer. They did say that the result was equivocal and there were moves in America to have the committee remove the word "equivocal". In other words, if it was not important they would have removed it. What the people who required that found was that they would not remove the word "equivocal". They held it there simply because they were not prepared to say that fluoride was not a carcinogen.
Mr Wood mentioned two scientific committees which I had mentioned in the report and during my presentation on the motion and which had been required to look at the matter. Mr Wood said that he could not find any other data. Good heavens, perhaps he could have come along to me. The report I put in was four pages long. I could have made it 30. I could have included the six inches of toxicological data that I have from America from the national toxicology program study, but I thought that I had better keep it simple.
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