Page 3029 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 14 September 1993
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them many times a day. Operators have complained of major repair and maintenance problems, largely due to the poor state of land fill site roads. Given that there is an excess of material and equipment to grade roads with, it seems fair that the Government provide a reasonable level of service. That is something that the Minister might like to look at.
Madam Speaker, simple, easy to fix complaints included the removal of wash bay facilities for trucks at land fill sites. One operator said that he would not mind paying $2, or whatever it cost, to wash his truck, but found it slightly offensive that facilities which were once available are no longer on offer, especially now that they are paying $11 per tonne, soon to go up to $22 per tonne, to dump rubbish at land fill sites. Another complaint concerned the hopper enclosures being built for new buildings in Canberra. Apparently these are built to government specified regulations which are hopelessly out of date. For example, these hopper enclosure regulations are designed for rear-loading trucks, which have not been used for many years in Canberra. This means that the construction of these hopper enclosures is a waste of time and money because the operators cannot use them.
Another concern that some of the dumpers have come to me with relates to occupational health and safety. Some of the drivers apparently now have to get out of the truck in order to try to dump the rubbish because the hoppers are useless the way they are built. Perhaps the Minister and his department might care to liaise with DELP, or whatever the responsible department is, to make sure that if people have to build these hoppers their construction fits in with modern technology. Another problem being experienced at Canberra's tips since the introduction of tip fees is the waiting time at weighbridges. What happens is that the truck is weighed on entering, it dumps its load and then it must return to the queue to be weighed again empty if it is carrying a different trailer, as many do. The waiting time for trucks is causing major headaches for waste operators, who see it as wasted time - and wasted time is wasted money. The solution is simple, of course - two weighbridges, one at the entrance and one at the exit. I again ask the Minister to examine this problem and to let us know what can be done to minimise the waiting time for operators.
Another problem with tip fees, Madam Speaker, is the effect on recycling. One major waste operator has advised me that it will be removing bottle banks when residential tip fees are introduced. Such an introduction was flagged by the Government this afternoon in the budget papers. If people read the papers very carefully they will find that that is flagged. Very few waste industry people I spoke to denied that across-the-board tip fees are inevitable, even for residential use. That is something that the Government is alluding to; but I think the quicker that happens the better, because it is going to happen eventually anyway. The particular company reports that illegal dumping at recycling - - -
Mr Connolly: Too slow, too slow. I bet that if we introduced them tomorrow you would criticise us. You would put out a press release.
MR DE DOMENICO: No, I would not. I am glad that Mr Connolly brought that matter up. Mr Connolly will recall as far back as, I think, December or January 1992. Who could ever forget that wonderful photograph on the front of the Canberra Times of Mr Stefaniak and me. Mr Stefaniak, by the way, was in the bin and I was the one pushing it. It was damn heavy, I can tell you. The amazing launch of the ACT election campaign went to page 13 or 17.
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