Page 194 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2016
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that those in charge, those who should be offering leadership on issues such as better municipal management in this place, are failing and perhaps it is time to change government.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (5.15): To speak to the amendment and close, I reiterate that residents of Tuggeranong want answers. I appreciate the work the EPA and other agencies have done to date. Residents have not heard too much about that to date. They come to me saying that they smell the smell, they report the smell and they get nothing back. They want to know what the EPA has done about this issue. What have they found? Why does the smell keep coming back? What is causing the smell? Why can the ACT government not work out what is causing that smell? Why can the ACT government not stop the smell? If the cause of the smell is the tip, why not just come out and say that? If it is a specific incident, as Mr Rattenbury referred to a year ago, why not just say there is a specific program of works going on at the tip?
Mr Rattenbury: I did. We said that at the time.
MS LAWDER: That was a year ago; I am talking about the current incidents. If it is about putting in drainage piping, as someone has said, why would you do that over the December period?
I also wrote to the Chief Minister on this matter. I wrote a detailed list of questions—about a page and a half of questions—and I received a response from Mr Barr which I think was a bit dismissive. It was very disappointing that the Chief Minister did not seem to take this seriously or think it was an important issue. In response to my series of questions about the issue he wrote:
Landfill and composting facilities will, by their nature, always cause some odours. It is not possible to regulate such facilities to a zero odour level.
It was quite a dismissive response—dismissive of the concerns of Tuggeranong residents. He said also:
I would like to reassure you the ACT government takes its responsibility to preserve and protect our environment and air quality very seriously.
Really, Madam Speaker? What have we seen so far? What action have we seen apart from an investigation that seems to be relying heavily on information provided by my office and that seems to take place during standard working hours? What has the government been doing to identify the cause of the smell and, just as importantly, fix the problem?
The first time this went into the public arena in the Canberra Times in this current period before Christmas was through a resident in Fadden hills. He then later rang the EPA through Access Canberra, as I had asked him to do when he contacted me. Access Canberra would not put him through to the EPA, despite the fact that that is what the EPA had instructed me to tell people to do. Then there were other responses from the EPA saying they had not received any other complaints. If someone tries to call Access Canberra and is not put through, is it any wonder that there have not been any other complaints? It would make one question what the data collection process is like in the EPA. Once again, I passed that information back to the EPA to make sure they knew this was happening and to enable them to
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