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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 385 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

For the inquiry I propose, I would like to see adequate resources, because the return is obvious. It is to ensure that we have clean water and clean soil in the ACT. We already have a huge problem with contaminated soils. There is an issue here about how much more contamination we are creating by spraying God knows what around ovals. There is a big issue of spraying around ovals that children are playing on.

One of the arguments that I have heard about the Waipuna method not being taken up is the cost consideration. I understand that the trucks and the equipment are not available for purchase. They are available only for hire, and that is one of the main reasons for the cost being what it is. I understand that there is a competing company that does sell the trucks and equipment. This has brought the cost down substantially and, in fact, made it very comparable to the cost of the chemicals that are used at the moment. That aside, the cost of not using a less toxic alternative may not be obvious to us now, but it is certainly something that will become obvious as our waterways become contaminated and more and more of our soil becomes contaminated with the chemicals that we use at the moment.

I remind the Minister that in the ACT - indeed, around the world - we should be operating on the precautionary principle. It is one of the main principles behind the ecologically sustainable development guidelines. The precautionary principle is very clear. If you are not certain about the long-term effects of chemicals, poisons and sprays, then you do not use them. You look at alternatives, and you look very carefully at those alternatives. As I said, there are not necessarily always non-toxic alternatives, but I would hope that this inquiry would look at how the use of toxic sprays can be minimised and at how we can use sprays that are less toxic. There is a lot of research going on and a lot of work can be done on determining when those sprays can be used in the life cycle of the pest that we are treating, so that we can get away with a smaller volume and achieve the same sort of effect.

An argument sometimes used to justify the use of a poison is that the National Registration Authority has registered the poison. In fact, that is no argument at all. The NRA is very limited in the work that it can do. Its role is basically to assess the data that is provided by the company. Obviously, there is a problem with companies providing their own safety data. That is like asking the fox to be in charge of the henhouse. The NRA does not gather or assess any independent data. They do not do any independent testing. They merely gather what the company gives them and judge, by that information, whether to register a chemical or not. In the ACT we have the right to ban any chemicals. That is something that I would hope this inquiry would also look at.

At the moment chemicals such as 2,4-D are registered by the NRA. To show the problems with the whole registration system, 2,4-D is actually half of the agent orange formula, the other being 2,4,5-T; yet that is still registered by the NRA. There are problems with registering. That is outside our jurisdiction. We certainly need to be aware that merely registering a chemical does not mean that it has gone through the rigorous testing that it needs to go through in order to ensure that it has some level of safety and to ensure that it is used according to certain guidelines.

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