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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-03-01 Daily Xml
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ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL

Mr HAMILTON-SMITH (Waite) (14:31): My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. Can he explain how it is that the 31,000 tonnes of soil assessed by experts to be high-level contaminated at the rail yards Royal Adelaide Hospital site comes to be reassessed as low-level contaminated soil or clean fill once removed to the contractor's depot? Before removal, this soil at the rail yards RAH site was thoroughly scrutinised by independent environmental experts engaged by the minister. The soil was found to contain lead and highly dangerous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which have a long life and which cannot be eradicated.

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Ageing, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Arts) (14:32): I thank the member for his question. The first point I would make is that as the Minister for Health I am not an expert in site contamination. That is why we employ people who are and we have that process in place on this site. We have the EPA which controls the program that is put in place so they determine the outcomes and the standards which have to be applied and then an independent environmental auditor supervises the process. That is what happened in this case.

I am happy to seek advice from those involved in that to give to you, but the advice I have is that they made an assessment on the site, and then a more detailed assessment was done once it got to the landfill site, where they determined that the level of contamination at that site characterised it in a particular way and then it was dealt with according to that characterisation.

It is easy to come in here and use emotional language and throw a lot of scientific terms around to try and suggest that something that is white is black. The opposition is expert at that, but the reality is that we rely on expertise. We do not rely on politics to make these decisions.

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