Page 1918 - Week 06 - Thursday, 2 May 1991
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Ambient Lead Levels
MR CONNOLLY: My question is to the Chief Minister, in his environment Minister portfolio. Chief Minister, will the Government admit that its efforts to monitor the levels of lead pollution in Canberra's air have been seriously flawed to date?
MR KAINE: I do not know what Mr Connolly means by "seriously flawed". I do understand that there have been some errors as a result of the monitoring. I am not clear whether they were the result of a technical problem with the monitoring equipment, or whether it is a problem resulting from the analysis of those figures, or quite what the problem is. But, apparently, there has been a misinterpretation of the results. There is no doubt about that. It is a matter of public record.
The Government, however, is now making sure that the readings are properly taken and that the results are properly interpreted. All that means is that there has to be some caution exercised in using the figures from earlier readings. I do not quite know whether Mr Connolly is implying that somehow or other the Government is at fault because the equipment does not work correctly. I am not sure what the thrust of his question is, but I can assure Mr Connolly that the Government is serious about monitoring those levels. It has done everything that can reasonably be done to achieve it.
If there is some error in the readings of the monitoring equipment, I hardly think that Mr Connolly - or Mr Berry even, for that matter - could say that the Government is somehow at fault because the process has not produced the desired results. We are making sure that whatever happened in the past - even in the time when the Labor Government was in office - if the readings were incorrect, they will be correct in the future.
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Speaker, by way of a supplementary question, I will try to clarify the thrust of the question. Why is the Government now seeking to establish new and "proper facilities for the monitoring of Canberra's air lead levels"?
MR KAINE: Because the processes set in place by the previous Labor Government have proved to be defective, and we have only recently found out.
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