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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (12 October) . . Page.. 2938 ..

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, I must say that this is a very difficult issue. Ms Tucker put up a censure motion. Clearly it has support from Labor, and yet Mr Berry constantly interjects. He makes it incredibly difficult to concentrate and to deal with what is an important issue. Do they consider a censure motion - - -

MR SPEAKER: I uphold your complaint, Mr Moore. I can only assume it is an attempt to drown you out, and I would be very suspicious of anybody who attempted to do that. Please be quiet.

MR MOORE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. The other issue raised by Mr Corbell that I think is particularly important is why was it necessary for the union to do the testing. That is a question I asked myself. It seemed to me to be rather strange that the union would do this first bit of testing. The picture is that it was drawn to the attention of an occupational health and safety officer - I understand it was John Clyde, a member of the CFMEU - that there was a load that was unusual. There was then a meeting of the occupational health and safety landfill working group. It was held on 31 August and the minutes were written up on 6 September. Those minutes indicate that there was general agreement that this material needed to be tested, and John Clyde said he had arranged for samples of floc to be tested. The occupational health and safety landfill working group agreed that he would do the testing because at that stage it was just a question of a suspicion.

When that test came back it was clear that there were very high levels of lead in the load. Now, remember that the load was suspicious. It was different in that it contained steel cable. When the test came back it showed that there were high levels of lead in the material. Then, of course, the department undertook to do the testing, not just of that individual load but of the 2,000 tonnes.

Talking about semantics and so forth, Mr Corbell quoted from the press release that Mr Smyth put out. The third paragraph of that press release makes the situation very clear. It states:

Mr Corbell: One load of this waste.

Ms Tucker: Keep reading.

Mr Berry: Read out the next bit.

MR MOORE: It says:

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