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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 785 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: I thank Mr Osborne for his second question in this place on the environment.

Mr Osborne: And hopefully the last.

MR HUMPHRIES: Not the last, no doubt. I am sure about that. I welcome this question because the questions are being asked first and the accusations, if any, made later. That stands in contrast to the position taken by the former director of the Conservation Council, who did it the other way round - much to the regret of most people observing this process.

Ms Horodny: We will see about that.

MR HUMPHRIES: Ms Horodny interjects, "We will see about that". I have engaged in correspondence with Mr Darlington since the time that these allegations were made and I have asked him to prove the allegations that were made. Ultimately, he came back to me and said, "Can you prove that the incinerator is safe?". I would have thought that was a rather strange question to pose, given that he was the one who, with a couple of others, issued a press release saying the incinerator is not safe and is spewing out toxic chemicals that are affecting the people of North Sydney - North Canberra.

Ms McRae: North Sydney? It must be pretty bad.

MR HUMPHRIES: I have no doubt that it would have reached North Sydney if Mr Darlington's claims had been pursued; but they were nipped in the bud, fortunately. Let me make it perfectly clear. I have not yet had put to me a single iota of evidence to suggest that there is anything unsafe about the incinerator at Mitchell. It is a state-of-the-art incinerator with a very high standard of environmental output; that is, it is careful in the environmental outputs that it produces. The allegation about it producing cyanide was based on a misreading of a technical document.

Ms Horodny: Oh!

MR HUMPHRIES: It was, Ms Horodny. I put it back to anybody who has criticised that statement that they should show me where I am wrong in making that assertion, and so far nobody has. I maintain that, to the best of my knowledge, that incinerator is quite safe and that it has never once produced any dangerous chemicals or substances to affect people anywhere near it in the ACT. However, Mr Osborne has raised a concern which I think is a quite reasonable concern, namely, that, these issues having been put on the table, fears will be generated in the community about these sorts of issues and they should be allayed. I am therefore prepared to accede to much of what Mr Osborne has suggested, in order to allay those fears.

I will have prepared an inventory of all waste material currently being stored at Totalcare for incineration. Totalcare already complies voluntarily with a manifest system which records all wastes which are received from interstate, particularly from New South Wales, for incineration. I will undertake to have Totalcare management establish a similar recording system for all wastes received for incineration from within the ACT.

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