Page 541 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 June 1989
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Mr Kaine: That must have been exciting.
MR BERRY: It was eye-opening and I can assure you, Mr Kaine, that it would do you good to go there to get some inspiration about the struggles of working-class people. The tip that I am talking about has been described as "Smoky Mountain", and I think there was an article run on the ABC about the tip. About 5,000 Filipino workers live on the tip and they draw some of their income from scavenging material there.
It covered an area of several hectares, about 5,000 people lived on the tip, and it tugged at the heartstrings to see little children scratching through the rubbish and retrieving pieces of glass as big as your fingernail and aluminium bottle tops, all in the interests of selling them to buy themselves and their families something to eat. All of the houses on the place were built out of pretty poor quality materials that were dumped by a Filipino society, which, of course, has a far lower living standard than ours.
On reflection, as far as this debate is concerned, I think the issue of cost and fees really comes down to whether or not we can afford the cost of not doing something about recycling. I am reminded of the smell of that tip and the sights that I saw, and I think we run the risk of being up to our necks in garbage, waste and pollution if something is not done. I would urge the committee to give the deepest attention to the very important issue that it is to consider as a result of this motion.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (11.46): Mr Speaker, before the Minister closes the debate on this subject, I would like to make a couple of comments and they have nothing to do with the question of recycling our waste. I think that everybody has made plenty of comments about that, some of them wide-ranging and a long way from the ACT and what is relevant here and what is not. I do not think anybody is going to argue about the fact that some sort of proposal needs to be put forward to deal with this matter.
My question is, first of all, whether it is appropriate to ask a committee of this Assembly to undertake this task and, secondly, what were the motives of the Minister in putting the matter forward. Let me deal with the first question first. It is interesting that this motion has been put forward by a Minister of the Government, a Minister who has the entire resources of the ACT Administration behind her, an Administration whose responsibility surely it is to put forward proposals for dealing with matters like this. Here she is asking a standing committee of this Assembly - and we have a burgeoning number of standing committees, with limited secretariat resources to service them - to conduct a major inquiry and asking the committee to report by 31 October.
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