Page 3880 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 23 October 1990
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MR KAINE: I will accept his ruling if you will, Mr Speaker. The thing is that if Mr Connolly goes and reads Hansard he will discover that he made a misstatement because he refers in Hansard, I am told, to my having said - - -
Mr Connolly: You have been reading Hansard after all.
MR KAINE: No, I have not, but lots of people read Hansard. I do not read it; I have not the time. But other people do. I do not go delving around to try to find some nonsense to bring up in the Assembly, but I am sure that if Mr Connolly reads Hansard he will discover that he made a slip of the tongue too, which just goes to show that anybody can.
Mr Speaker, I do not believe that anybody in this Assembly, including the people opposite, could say that I am anything but an open person. I am not devious, I am not vicious, I am not given to committing criminal acts, either spontaneously or with malice aforethought. So, Mr Speaker, I throw myself at the mercy of the court. Being the up-front sort of person that I am, I will be only too pleased to withdraw the word, if I indeed uttered it, and apparently I did. I am prepared to abase myself before this court, Mr Speaker, and to acknowledge to the eminent practising lawyer, the great sleuth opposite, and to his trusty henchmen, and of course to you, Mr Speaker, that I confess the error of my ways. Mr Speaker, I beg the court's indulgence.
Lower Molonglo Water Quality Control Centre
MR JENSEN: Mr Speaker, my question is directed to Mr Duby in his capacity as Minister for Urban Services. I refer the Minister to recent comments by the New South Wales member for Monaro, Mr Peter Cochran, about alleged cost cutting on the part of the Alliance Government causing the phasing out of the nitrate removal process by the lower Molonglo treatment plant, resulting in a greater threat of algal blooms in the Murrumbidgee River. Could the Minister advise the house: firstly, have cost cutting measures been the problem, as stated by Mr Cochran; and, secondly, is there a problem in New South Wales with algal blooms, caused by the standard of discharge from the Molonglo treatment works into the Murrumbidgee River?
MR DUBY: I thank Mr Jensen for the question. Yes, I am aware of Mr Cochran's statements, and I would like to say quite categorically that there is no truth whatsoever in the suggestion that Alliance Government budget cuts have interfered with the standard of treatment of effluent at the Lower Molonglo Water Quality Control Centre. No cuts have been applied in that particular area, and I can state with confidence that the control centre produces the highest quality effluent of any major sewage treatment works in Australia. If other sewage treatment works
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