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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1418 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Osborne has raised in this place the issue of plasma arc technology. I think that it is important for Totalcare to keep abreast of emerging technologies which might be better able to deal with the Territory's needs to dispose of clinical and hazardous waste. Plasma arc technology is already in use in Australia for destroying gases and liquids which are not suitable for incineration. An example, apparently, is the halon destruction facility in Melbourne, which I think is the end point for many halons collected in the ACT. Plasma treatment for solid wastes is a new technology, and the Government is currently investigating its suitability. Of course, any decision in relation to the plasma technology will depend on its economic viability as well as its environmental performance.

In summary, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am satisfied that the Totalcare incinerator is being operated in an environmentally responsible manner. Clearly, however, our current environmental protection laws have to be upgraded - they are inadequate - and that is what we intend to do tomorrow with the tabling of the Environment Protection Bill. That legislation will put in place a better regulatory framework to deal with both the incinerator at Totalcare and a whole range of environmental issues which the Territory needs to address. We are also considering options to meet the Territory's clinical and hazardous waste disposal needs in the future, and perhaps plasma arc technology will be one of those options.

In response to Mr Osborne's request in the Assembly last month, I have given commitments which have produced full daily records of everything incinerated at Totalcare since last month, or stored for incineration, and full records of the temperature at which the incinerator operated during incineration. As I said, I will table those documents tomorrow. They have been received by the Pollution Control Authority just today, and they are being collated now in a form which can be tabled in this place tomorrow.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I close by saying that it is extremely important that none of us succumb to the temptation to want to buy support - to buy votes, if we are politicians - by running around crying, "Toxic chemicals, dangerous substances in the air, danger to our children". It is a very easy claim to make, in the absence of a full picture of the information available. We have protections in the ACT to deal with these sorts of issues, including such agencies as the Commissioner for the Environment. We will have new and better agencies in the form of the Environment Protection Bill tomorrow and the mechanisms that sets up. We should, as a rule, try to rely on those resources, those mechanisms, those safeguards, before we run to the media with hysterical claims. Regrettably, an agency in this Territory which ought to have known better did not do that; but I hope that the information that I have put before the Assembly today and that I have already put before the public will help to dissuade others from following that very unfortunate path. I commend Mr Osborne's motion to the Assembly.

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