Page 4160 - Week 13 - Thursday, 25 November 1993
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put back into it - fertiliser, if you like. It is not the sort of thing one would wish to drink as a staple diet, but it is certainly not the raw sewage that the more fervent imaginations opposite seem to think it is. That was detected towards the end of October or November.
The point is that the first suspicion that it was seepage in September was notified to the EPS. The person who wrote that briefing note used somewhat loose language. It is possible, with a fervent imagination and a conspiracy theory, to draw from that briefing note the inference - - -
Mr Humphries: It says it in black and white.
Mr De Domenico: It says it in the thing. He signed it.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order!
MR CONNOLLY: Look, settle down. It is possible to draw from that briefing note an inference that ACTEW knew - - -
Mrs Carnell: It said on the 23rd that they knew.
MR CONNOLLY: No, no; not that ACTEW knew that it was seepage. In fact, as was made clear in the material sent to the EPS, that was a suspicion. I wrote to Mrs Carnell, setting out these facts and offering her full briefing. Mrs Carnell, as a cheap and sensationalist politician, has chosen not - - -
Members interjected.
MR CONNOLLY: This is a serious indictment, Madam Speaker. Mrs Carnell has chosen not to take up that offer of a briefing. She says glibly, "I will get that next week". So she does not want to look at the facts, on a very serious matter. Nothing could be more serious, Madam Speaker, than the allegation that the Electricity and Water Authority is deliberately polluting the environment. That is a serious allegation. I have refuted that in a statement to Mrs Carnell, and I have offered Mrs Carnell the full material. I think you asked for the raw data, and I think I said in my letter to you, "The raw data is a massive pile of material, It may be more convenient, Mrs Carnell, if I provided you with the raw data and an engineer to go with it to explain it". Mrs Carnell, instead of taking up that offer of briefing, comes in here and makes the sensationalist allegation that ACTEW is involved in a conspiracy to pollute the lake.
Mrs Grassby: That does not get you headlines, Mr Minister.
MR CONNOLLY: Exactly, Mrs Grassby; that does not get you headlines. Madam Speaker, I am disappointed in Mrs Carnell because I have made it a practice with Opposition members, if they ask for briefings within their portfolio areas, or in the case of Mrs Carnell, as Opposition Leader, on anything, to offer them.
There is a serious issue of public importance here. Is our Electricity and Water Authority acting irresponsibly in relation to the environment? An allegation has been made by a journalist that it has. It was refuted by me repeatedly. It was refuted by me in a letter to Mrs Carnell, which I do not have here - you can table that as well - but which set out the sequence of events, which is different
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