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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (12 October) . . Page.. 2942 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

Conceding that this stuff has been coming in since 1996, how many tens of thousands of tonnes have come in, and why did the Government not once ask, "What is in here? What are the health risks inherent in importing this material into the ACT? What are the health risks to the workers and to residents of Belconnen, and what are the environmental implications of burying that amount of lead contaminated material in the landfill at Belconnen?". There is an interesting process issue there which reflects extremely badly on this Government and on the Minister in that never once did he or his officers say, "Look, let's have a serious look at this". What they did was rely on a test provided to them at the time of signing by the company wishing to import the material into the ACT.

There is an overriding issue here about duty of care and the responsibility of this Minister and this Government to show that level of concern not only for the health of people working at the tip but also for the residents of Belconnen. Let us not assume that this is just a health problem limited to workers at the Belconnen tip. On the basis that tens of thousands of tonnes of this material may have come into the ACT over the last three years and nobody has ever questioned whether or not it is safe - it is floc, and it is susceptible to burning and being blown around - who knows how much of this floc has blown over Belconnen? These are issues that never seem to concern the Government or the Minister.

Accepting the general criticisms that could be laid at the feet of the Government for its curiously innocent approach to the burial of waste in the ACT, let us look at the particular issue of the discovery after three to four years that, yes, this stuff is seriously dangerous; that it contains lead at a level 10 times above the accepted level. Let us ponder the fact that it has taken three years to discover, after a single test provided by the person dumping the material three years ago, that in fact this stuff is incredibly dangerous. We have a three-year hiatus here during which the Government took no action and made no tests. We do not know how much of this stuff we have accepted. We do not know how much of it is buried.

At this point, three years after we began to accept the material, the union, the representative of the workers, investigated some health problems being experienced by its workers. Let us not gloss over this. The CFMEU did not just say one day, "I think we might test this floc". The union tested the floc because workers at the tip were complaining about irritated throats and being ill. The CFMEU, faced with workers expressing concerns about the nature of this material, tested it, and yet we have Mr Kaine bagging the CFMEU for showing that level of concern for its workers.

Mr Kaine was suggesting that the CFMEU was trying to make some political point, and that this just involved some political grandstanding. In fact, it was the CFMEU that discovered that the Government has been accepting into the ACT tens of thousands of tonnes of seriously contaminated material. They should be applauded, not condemned; just as Ms Tucker should be applauded for the work that she has done in exposing this problem and alerting the Canberra community to the fact that we have a serious issue here. What was Mr Moore's response to that? It was basically to bag Ms Tucker; to shoot the messenger; to deride her for alerting the Canberra community to a very serious public health issue - something that one would have hoped that maybe he would have had an interest in.

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