Page 656 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 May 1992

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'(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1)(b), a concentration that -

(a) would result in an average concentration of 1.0 milligram per litre during a period of 24 hours; and

(b) does not exceed 1.2 milligrams per litre;

shall be taken to be a concentration of 1.0 milligram per litre.'.".

The amendments which I am proposing have been circulated to members, as has an explanatory memorandum. As Mr Berry indicated in the Government's in-principle response to this legislation, we were caught in something of a bind with the original proposal that Mrs Carnell brought before the Assembly, in blending what it is appropriate for a law to say and what an engineer can, in fact, achieve. There is a problem in adding items to the water supply, that you cannot guarantee an absolute level at any given moment. The level will fluctuate, depending on water flow and the level that is put in. So, there is a level of approved or acceptable tolerance which is familiar to an engineer or a scientist, or a pharmacist in Mrs Carnell's case, but which to a lawyer or a legislator it is sometimes difficult to accept because we often think that if we say that the law is such it will be such; but in engineering parlance that is not always possible.

This amendment that is being proposed is seeking principally to say that it is the will of the Assembly that the level in the water supply be that recommended by the relevant national medical authorities, to which members have referred - that is, one part per million - but accepting, as they accept, that it involves a level of fluctuation and that that "one part per million" in shorthand language can mean "down to 0.8 or up to 1.2". In effect, we are saying that we want that level of one part per million, but that the quite substantial criminal sanctions that the principal Act provides, of a $50,000 fine, which will come into effect next week, which is why we have brought this on in Executive business time today - it is very important that we deal with this before next week - should not cut in unless we get above the acceptable tolerance of 20 per cent, that is, above 1.2.

So, essentially we are changing the original level of one part per million to a more precise formulation, which is saying that we want it to be an average concentration of one part per million in accordance with what the National Health and Medical Research Council had to say, but that we understand that it involves a level of tolerance because of water flow and simply the engineering difficulties of adding a substance to water. The allowable concentration means that at any one time it can go up to 1.2 milligrams per litre, so it is building into the law that accepted level of tolerance.

Another minor matter is that we are adding "otherwise treating" to the phrase that refers to "clarifying or purifying". It has long been the practice in the ACT for ACTEW to introduce lime into the water supply. That is done to adjust the acid balance, the pH balance, of water, and it is important to keep that within a band of tolerance. On engineering advice, the lime neither clarifies nor purifies the water; rather, it treats it for acid balance. If this amendment were not included,

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