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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-11-09 Daily Xml
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DOCK 1 REDEVELOPMENT

The Hon. M. PARNELL (14:59): When would the public have been made aware of the SafeWork SA advice, given that there is no legal obligation under the Development Act or the Dangerous Substances Act to disclose that information?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister Assisting the Premier in Public Sector Management) (14:59): I know that it is great politics for the Greens to raise concerns. As I said the other day, the Hon. Mark Parnell is the sort of person who would go into a crowded picture theatre and yell 'Fire!' if it was of some benefit to him.

What the government tries to do is actually resolve the issues. If there is a potential problem in relation to a plant, the government tries to resolve it. That is exactly what happened in this case: when these reports came to the government, that process immediately took place. Remember, it was nothing to do with the public meeting the honourable member had last week with residents of Birkenhead: it was about an application for the subdivision at Dock 1. It was as a result of that that this came to light, and the government acted appropriately.

Let me also say that there are plenty of other risks. If you have a fully loaded petrol tanker, or gas tanker, going past your house and it explodes, that is going to cause a lot of devastation within the area, but we live with that risk. We know that is a risk and we live with it. What we have to do is deal with the risk. It is all very well to play politics with one particular risk, even if it is low; what we have to do is deal with risk management. We have to deal with relative risks.

Society does not eliminate all risk; we live with it every day. As I said, if we did not we would probably ban petrol stations and the delivery of any dangerous material on our streets. The question is proper risk management and reducing the risk, and that is how we should operate in relation to these matters. There is significant risk in all things that we do, but what good management is about, whether it is government or any other level, is trying to keep that risk within reasonable levels, but we can never eliminate it entirely.

In relation to making that information available, it has been well known to anyone that Incitec Pivot has been producing ammonium nitrate in that plant for many years, and there are other fertiliser plants around the country. If the honourable member wants to raise havoc in other areas then, presumably, he can raise issues on that, or a whole lot of other issues, if that is his wont, but the fact is that the Incitec Pivot plant has been producing fertilisers for many years at that location.

If, as the honourable member says, people had raised concerns, then why did the Hon. Mr Parnell himself not raise this issue earlier, if that was the case and if it was such a concern to him? The fact is that the government will deal with that industry, just as we deal with the risks we face from a whole lot of other industries, whether through air pollution or other risks; we have to manage it. We have this legacy issue. Unfortunately, for better or worse, during the 1950s and 1960s, we had policies in this state to locate people (workers) close to factories. That was considered the norm at the time, and that is what we are left with.

We do not do that nowadays. We now try to locate foundries and other industrial premises of that type away from residential areas. We separate them; we try to put them in proper precincts; we try to put them where we rate the risk so that we do not have incompatible industries located too close together that might exacerbate the risk. We do that nowadays, but we have many legacy issues, and they are not just in the Lefevre Peninsula: they are in a number of areas of this state.

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