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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (30 August) . . Page.. 2679 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I acknowledge that the government released a firewood strategy in 1999, but the voluntary approach adopted by government has not achieved much change. It is now time to take stronger efforts to reduce wood smoke pollution so that by next winter we will have the necessary systems in place to make a difference to the levels of wood smoke we have been suffering for years.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (4.59): The government will oppose the motion and it will oppose the bill. The recent CSIRO study Ms Tucker referred to was done in 1997. It focused on the way information is gathered, not necessarily on the information. From this it was concluded that part of the concentrations in Canberra over winter are two times greater than those in Sydney and Melbourne. That is an interesting assumption to make. We have to look at what the study compared. It compared measurements taken in Sydney from August to November in 1996.

Ms Tucker: I said we had measurements in 1999.

MR SMYTH: The CSIRO report that you spoke of was published in 1997. The analysis in Liverpool in Sydney was done in August/September 1996. The Monash examples were from monitoring in May/June 1997. So we are not comparing levels at the same time of the year, in the same season and in the same weather conditions. It is now late August and it is much warmer and much clearer. To compare the high-use period of May/June 1997 with the potentially lower use period of August/September 1996 is not a fair comparison. Wind and therefore pollution dispersal are much higher in August/September. Pollution going into the air over Liverpool in August/September 1996 was potentially dispersing faster.

We do not know that, because the report does not tell us what the prevailing weather conditions at the time were. It does not tell us what the weather patterns were or what the comparisons between the two seasons were. The primary purpose of the report was to look at the analysis systems. The samples were collected for 26 days in Monash; they were collected for 32 days in Liverpool. With such short periods of measurement, it is also possible that the period for Canberra may have been a particularly cold period-I do not recall. The period for Sydney may have been particularly good-I do not recall.

At 5.00 pm the debate was interrupted in accordance with standing order 34. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MR SMYTH: It does not change the fact that Sydney's pollution levels are normally much worse than Canberra's. This information is just a distortion. This is selective use of material to push a wheelbarrow. The results for Canberra were not good, but I believe they were not as bad as for Sydney.

Ms Tucker jumps the gun. In paragraph (1) of the motion she wants a review of the ACT's existing air pollution monitoring system to ensure that it is adequate for detecting concentrations of particles down to 2.5 micrometers in diameter across Canberra on a continuous basis. This is premature, because under the ambient air quality NEPM there is a requirement that particles of less than 10 microns be monitored on a continual basis.

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