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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-05-04 Daily Xml
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Motions

PFAS Disposal

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. D.J. Speirs:

That this house requests that the Environment, Resources and Development Committee investigate and report on the appropriate and safe disposal of PFAS contaminated waste in South Australia, and in particular—

(a) criteria for disposal of PFAS contaminated waste;

(b) criteria for site selection (landfill engineering);

(c) consequences of not having an appropriate pathway for PFAS contaminated waste disposal, including reference to case studies; and

(d) any other related matters.

(Continued from 17 March 2021.)

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:42): I rise as the lead speaker for this side of the chamber and indicate that this side of the chamber has absolutely no objection to supporting this referral. In so indicating, I would note that any suggestion that this might be the way to deal with the question of PFAS at this time would be incorrect. It is completely acceptable to send a thorny issue like this, which has come to prominence in recent times, to a parliamentary committee for consideration about the way in which the state might actively manage and deal with the contamination caused by this material.

That does not in any way preclude opportunity to take a different position through legislation on where it is not safe to place the material. It in no way suggests that we do not have an active obligation so to do in order to make sure that one-off applications by companies seeking to take this material, entitled to want to do that to make a dollar, but that that those one-off applications ought not then precipitate concern in the community and a desire for that community to have to protect its own soil, the crops and the land in which they live. That is an entirely reasonable approach being undertaken by a separate piece of legislation and is not in any way incompatible with sending this referral to the committee. On that basis, the opposition will support the referral.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning and Local Government) (11:44): I also rise today to support the referral of this matter, in particular the provision for per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, to the ERD Committee. Essentially, the committee will look at and report on the appropriate and safe disposal of PFAS contaminated waste in South Australia and, in particular, criteria for site selection (landfill engineering), criteria for disposal of PFAS contaminated waste and the consequences of not having an appropriate pathway for PFAS contaminated waste disposal, including reference to case studies, and any other related matter.

I agree with the deputy leader that it is appropriate that our parliament, through the committee, consider these matters. That is not to say there has not been considerable work done at a national and state level over recent years. One of the reasons we need to keep up with what is happening and also be participatory in decisions on site selection for the safe disposal of PFAS is that the approval of construction for any new landfill site is the responsibility of the relevant planning authority under the Planning Development and Infrastructure Act 2016. It is a piece of legislation for which I have responsibility and obviously will be closely involved in if the relevant planning authority is a local council or other bodies such as the state commission.

In short, there is a history of the development of what has happened so far once it was identified that there was contamination and aspects in relation to the management of this. It is a bit like what we are dealing with at the moment in regard to silicosis, which relates to dust from the carving up of stone benches for kitchens and whether that is going to have some adverse health effects and potential compensation claims. These are the sorts of contemporary things we have to deal with once a problem has been identified. In short, it seems that PFAS has a long life and of course the capacity to contaminate over a sustained period, so the careful management, disposal and storage of this material is critical.

I think for the record it is important to note that the Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Framework for Responding to PFAS Contamination, which is a national agreement between commonwealth, state and territories, was established. The IGA was originally signed in February 2018 by the former Premier of South Australia the Hon. Jay Weatherill. That must have been one of the last acts of the government of the day. I think that is an important step in the states signing up to how this matter is to be dealt with.

There are a number of appendices to the IGA. The PFAS National Environment Management Plan was also developed by the heads of the EPAs in Australia and New Zealand. It gives some nationally agreed guidance on the management of legacy PFAS contamination in the environment. The actions to be considered here are to prevent or minimise the potential environmental harm from PFAS, ensuring that PFAS contaminated waste materials and products are effectively stored and/or remediated to prevent release, also ensuring, as I said, the proper disposal of PFAS contaminated waste—for example, by properly characterising waste and then sending it to a facility licensed to accept it—and undertaking appropriate monitoring to check the effectiveness of the management measures implemented.

There is quite a significant amount of material, if members want to be informed, on what is currently being undertaken in relation to the development of landfill disposal criteria for PFAS contaminated waste. Significantly, the minister who is proposing this referral to the committee has undertaken a considerable role since we came into government to ensure that we develop landfill disposal criteria. For the benefit of members, they are set out in guidelines dated March last year. I thank the minister, who covers both the EPA and of course environmental matters in the government, for making all of that available online. I think it is important that the public be aware of what we are dealing with here and what is underway to protect the situation.

This is a product that has been used in consumer and industrial products since the 1950s. It is a bit like asbestos: it was a great building material at the time, thought to be very cheap, light and available for construction and utilised in public and private buildings across the country, and of course we ended up with a massive piece of litigation against James Hardie in relation to claims as a result of the mesothelioma that has developed from it.

In a circumstance where they have a life, they have a resistance to water, heat, fire, stain and weather, but they also have some downsides, and we need to think carefully about how we do this, so I thank the minister for working with that. I note also that the Environment Protection (Water Quality) Policy of 2015, obviously a development of the previous government, has kept this moving.

It has a national stage. It is underpinned by an agreement. We have a management plan. There is continuing work going on with this. EPAs all around Australia and New Zealand are working at keeping this up to date. We do not have a site for storage in South Australia. This referral will assist everyone to have a say and will also assist us as a government to make decisions about how this be dealt with. Then agencies that I might have responsibility for in the planning areas will be able to proceed to implement that.

Members may be aware that there are, of course, some sites interstate. I think Western Australia has three. At this stage, one can imagine, of course, that trying to separate and store them safely for the purpose of transport and the cost of sending that to Western Australia would be very prohibitive. I am not sure whether we have any of this waste around Australia. Irrespective of whether we have Labor or Liberal governments around the country, we are not seeing truckloads of this being shipped across the borders, but it is still a matter we need to deal with. Even in the landfill disposal sector, these are other aspects that need to be considered.

I thank the minister for progressing this, keeping the state parliament fully informed and giving people an opportunity to have a say about how we progress this while at a national level that continues to progress. I acknowledge the work of the previous government, of the commonwealth government and of our current minister, who has really taken the lion's share of responsibility in ensuring this is progressed. I commend the motion to the house.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (11:52): I support the referral and the establishment of an inquiry by the Environment, Resources and Development Committee, but I do not want to see this being used as some sort of answer to the prospect of PFAS being dumped in South Australia around the metropolitan area where people live, in close proximity to towns and regional cities and also near our primary production lands.

I think it is good to have an inquiry, because what we heard during the debate about whether PFAS should be dumped in the McLaren Vale wine region, where the dump site sits above aquifers, was that, because it is in an old sand quarry, if there were any leaching or leaking of the PFAS poisons into the watertable they would wick them straight over to Willunga, down into Maslin Beach, and down to Port Willunga and Aldinga. This would have the potential, in 20 to 30 years' time, when people start dying of cancer or having other health problems, that they would ask, 'Why do we have this in our area?' They would go back and they would say, 'Because a decision was taken in 2021 to allow this to be dumped.'

I think what we have been able to do in the past 10 or 11 months is raise awareness about the dangers of PFAS and the dangers of dumping it in areas. We can forgive people who unwittingly sprayed PFAS over RAAF bases and other firefighting grounds around Australia because they did not know the dangers. However, it is 2021, and we now know the dangers of PFAS materials. What we are talking about here is not necessarily the pizza boxes, the scotchguarded materials of clothing and things like that, it is more the wholesale disposal of soils that are being scraped up at RAAF bases around Australia.

What I think needs to happen is that the pressure gets put back on the commonwealth, because it is really the commonwealth that has the biggest problem here in how to dispose of PFAS. I hope this inquiry looks at that because I would look at South Australia as a state with a million square kilometres and, like most reasonable South Australians I have spoken to during this debate over the past 10 months, if we have a million square kilometres and it is largely a commonwealth problem—and we have an area called the Woomera restricted zone that is run by the commonwealth—why would we not be asking the commonwealth to look at whether some sort of above-ground disposal apparatus could be built to store the PFAS materials there?

I do not know whether that is the answer, but that is perhaps something that this committee could look at. I would also love to see victims of PFAS poisoning called before this committee. As I have mentioned in this place before, my son suffered from PFAS poisoning through eggs he ate that came from the Largs Bay Fire Station. My ex-wife has very high levels of PFAS poisoning as well, as does her partner, a firefighter, who was bringing home eggs and vegetables grown at the Largs Bay Fire Station. They were eating them thinking that they were doing the right thing and eating very organic and healthy foods.

I hope that all these different things are looked at. I also hope that the committee would look at the new technologies available. What the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) kept saying during the discussion over whether this should or should not be dumped in the McLaren Vale wine region was that to put it in landfill—even with these two linings, which other experts have said will fail—would mean that we will see the leaching and the leaking of these PFAS poisons into our watertable and into our soils around the McLaren Vale area.

The EPA kept coming back to the point that this is Australia's best technology, but it is actually not the best technology used in the world. The rest of the world does not put PFAS in landfill anymore. They have other ways of dealing with it. Interestingly enough, in Europe they are using a system that was devised by Australia's CSIRO. I have spoken to some scientists at the Adelaide University who are looking at techniques of rendering PFAS neutral—so taking away the dangers and the health repercussions that PFAS in its current form poses for all the people in South Australia where this could be dumped. I think the committee needs to look at that.

I have spoken to some members of the committee who say that they have a very full list of inquiries at the moment, so I hope this is not just a move by the government to say, 'Well, we're dealing with it because we are going to have this inquiry,' because people around Australia have been very disappointed in a series of inquiries that have been set up by the federal parliament to look into PFAS. They never actually report. They just have meetings and hearings and there are never any recommendations put forward.

While I welcome this, I would urge the parliament to put in a baseline to say that no PFAS should be dumped anywhere in South Australia until this inquiry has reached the point where it can make its recommendations to the parliament and to the people of South Australia. I do have a bill that will come back to the lower house that aims to do that, which would ban the dumping of PFAS within the Greater Adelaide metropolitan area, within 50 kilometres of primary production land in South Australia and within five kilometres, I think, of towns and cities in regional South Australia.

I think that should be, at the very least, the safeguard that we put in place until we have had the opportunity for this inquiry into PFAS and how we might better dispose of it in South Australia, or indeed if the technology is available to render it neutral and safe. I want to thank the minister for proposing this referral. I welcome it. I hope it is a wideranging inquiry, and I hope that we do hear from the victims of PFAS poisoning.

I hope we hear from people who are working on the technologies that are available. I hope we hear from people in industries like agriculture who face the very real risk of having their entire regions wiped out because of not just the reputational danger and damage that could be done to the produce they are trying to get out on the state, national and global markets but also the real health implications that could follow.

I know the level of angst in places like McLaren Vale, McLaren Flat, Willunga, Maslin Beach, Aldinga and Sellicks, and up to Seaford as well, about the prospect of this dump going ahead on the corner of Tatachilla Road and Main South Road at McLaren Vale. It was very real, and I am sure if a similar proposal were put up in any of the 47 electorates in South Australia there would be similar concerns if it were around people or a primary production area.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (12:00): I simply wish to take the opportunity to thank the various speakers for their contribution to this brief debate. I look forward to the committee undertaking this inquiry, digging into what is a very tricky issue, interviewing and hearing from hopefully many, if not all, of the stakeholders identified by the member for Mawson and giving this inquiry the prominence on its schedule of inquiries that it ought to have.

Motion carried.

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