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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (12 October) . . Page.. 2932 ..

MR CORBELL (11.06): Mr Speaker, the smooth and reassuring tone that just wafted over the chamber was an attempt by the Minister for Urban Services to get all members to think no more of this issue, to dismiss it from their minds and get on with the business of the day. That was the Minister's tactic this morning, Mr Speaker. It is a tactic which this Assembly should not accept because the motion this morning is not about whether the Minister acted on scientific advice. That is not what the motion is about. The motion this morning is a motion of censure of the Minister for Urban Services for, firstly, misleading the Canberra community on the extent of the Government's response to the disposal of lead-contaminated metal floc at Belconnen and, secondly, misleading the Canberra community on the extent of the lead contamination of that metal floc. That is what the censure motion is about this morning. It is not about censuring the Minister for acting on scientific advice or not acting on scientific advice. It is for misleading our community on the extent of the Government's response to the contamination and misleading the community on the actual extent of the contamination. That is the issue that we are debating this morning, Mr Speaker.

It is important that this motion be supported by the Assembly because, as a community, we entrust the Government with a duty of care. We entrust them with a duty of care to make sure that our environment, firstly, is protected and, secondly, is safe for people. The Government has failed on both counts at Belconnen, for the following reasons: First of all the Minister, in his media statement of 24 September, said:

that is, the concern about the waste -

Mr Speaker, that is completely untrue, that is completely misleading. What occurred was that the union advised management at the Belconnen landfill that it was concerned about the load of metal floc, that it was putting bans on any further movement of that material by workers at the landfill, and that it was going to undertake its own testing. I am advised by the union representative involved that the response from management at the Belconnen landfill was that they could not stop the material from continuing to arrive and that, if the union wanted to undertake its own testing, that was its business.

Mr Speaker, that is a completely unsatisfactory response. More importantly, it gives the complete lie to the claim by the Minister in his media statement on 24 September that as soon as management was alerted by staff it acted and undertook the process of testing the questionable load. The management did not test the questionable load; the union did. That is the first piece of misleading, Mr Speaker. The management did not test the load; the union did. Secondly, he said that, as soon as management was alerted by the staff of their concerns, it acted. It did not; it continued to accept the material. It continued as though there was nothing wrong, as though there was no problem, as though there was no potential risk whatsoever. That is what the Government did for three whole weeks. Yet the Minister claims that they acted immediately and they tested the load. That is completely untrue, Mr Speaker, and the Government has failed in its duty of care in that regard.

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