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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3511 ..

jobs. If they are not the best people for the job, they do not get the job. But I will take advice on whether they were given the reason that they were overqualified.

MR CORNWELL: Mr Speaker, I ask a supplementary question. While you are about it, Minister, could you also find out whether they have been rejected because they have a reputation for speaking out against past problems in this area.

MS GALLAGHER: The insinuations just keep coming. So now the new Office for Children, Youth and Family Support, with a new management structure, is weeding people out because they may have had a view on something to do with child protection. You are making a very serious allegation there. I am not even going to pursue that one.

Mr Smyth: Oh, why not?

MS GALLAGHER: I am not going to pursue it. I will pursue whether or not people were told that because they are overqualified they did not get a job. I do not know how you measure whether someone did not get a job because they may have spoken out. It is not in the selection criteria.

Mr Quinlan: Give us some information. Substantiate your insinuation.

Mr Smyth: Don’t come to us. Go and check your files. Go and check your records.

MR SPEAKER: Order, members, please!

MS GALLAGHER: It is just ridiculous.

Bushfires—asbestos removal

MRS CROSS: My question is to the Minister for Urban Services. During a bushfire recovery meeting at Duffy primary school earlier this year, which ministers Quinlan and Corbell attended, some constituents raised concerns about the disposal of the debris from the homes destroyed by bushfires, some of which contained asbestos. Alarming comments were made by those constituents at that meeting that the disposed of debris was moved from one site and then stored elsewhere. The constituents’ concerns related to the handling of this debris, which included asbestos, a hazardous substance which many know has fatal consequences. Can the minister inform the Assembly whether the disposal of this material—its removal from one site and restorage in another—was handled in a safe way to ensure the community that no area was contaminated during this process?

MR WOOD: Indeed I can. It goes back quite a while. That program has been completed for a year or more.

Mrs Cross: No, I am still getting calls.

MR WOOD: You had better come to me with chapter and verse, then. Members will recall that at the time the contract was let predominantly for all houses destroyed by the fire—all sites. Extreme caution was taken in transporting that material to a site particularly established at the bottom of Mount Stomlo. That is where all the debris went.

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