Page 3377 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 August 2008
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seen assistance with dealing with those problems rather than heavy-handed action. I would also like to see a tyre recycling facility in the ACT and attempts to market its end products.
There are other issues. We know that we need reduction strategies for hazardous waste and increased fines for illegally dumping chemicals and other wastes. In fact, it is not well enough policed. I think it needs more funding. I am not sure whether the Office of Sustainability considers hazardous waste as part of its job, but the EPA is very unresourced to manage this area of our waste. We need a regular collection of toxic chemicals and other items, including batteries, from households and farms, with an education campaign to promote it.
At present there are plenty of rules governing toxic chemicals but no real incentives for people to do the right thing. It can be expensive to dispose of chemicals properly. In fact, it is cheaper to sneak them into landfill. So we have a problem with incentives. We need to turn around our thinking on waste. Yes, making landfill more expensive may reduce some waste, but it encourages illegal dumping. I look forward to the review of the no waste strategy. (Time expired.)
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Housing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (5.08): I first need to address some of the things that Dr Foskey said. She spoke about hazardous chemicals and all that sort of thing. I seem to have missed the congratulations that the Greens gave us over the latest initiative relating to fluorescent light tubes. They can now be recycled at Mugga Lane and at Mitchell. But I did not hear any encouragement from those opposite or Dr Foskey about that at all.
It is sad because sometimes Dr Foskey talks a lot of sense and sometimes she lets us all down. She talks from a considered basis of ignorance. She described our treatment of Revolve as heavy-handed. That is nothing short of pure ignorance from someone who can speak in this place under privilege. Let me say this for your information, Mr Assistant Speaker, and for the information of Dr Foskey: these people are the experts in green waste and they know how to dispose of green waste. We have seen it happen already. It is called a tap on the shoulder. That is the ultimate disposal of the green waste.
Let me turn to Revolve. There was a contract with Thiess, not with the government, and it terminated. It came to the end of its time. We are obliged under the Financial Management Act and the ACT Government Procurement Act to go to public tender. We would be crucified by the ACCC if we did anything else. We would have breached the acts and we would have been treated just like Mrs Carnell and thrown on the scrapheap of history—the same as Dr Foskey is about to go onto the scrapheap of history.
Mr Assistant Speaker, we conformed with the acts and what happened? Of course, she is doing as most people do. She is wandering off. She does not want to hear the truth about Revolve. But I will put it on the record. They lost the tender. There is nothing I can do about it. Why, I hear you ask? I was not involved in it. It was done by Procurement Solutions, an arm of Treasury. It was not done by my department. It was done at arm’s length. They then established themselves somewhere else and they owe the territory in excess of $20,000 in rent.
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