Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my colleagues the member for Hindmarsh and the member for Paterson for putting this motion on the Notice Paper,and I also thank them and the member for Canberra for their contributions. I think they have done a very good job of outlining the deficiencies in the way in which the government has dealt with this issue.

I was involved in the first consultation in Katherine some many months ago now and, sadly, apart from me and a couple of local councillors, no-one from the public turned up. That raised serious questions about the engagement of the Department of Defence with the local community on this issue or, alternatively, the lack of information that was made available to them. I do not at all suggest that the people responsible at RAAF Base Tindal were in some way doing the wrong thing. There is no doubt that they were operating on the best information available to them, which is bloody poor information. And we have got to a point, as we have heard, where a report was released some little time ago now about the testing at various sites across the country, and people have been left to wonder. That is the issue here.

I fully recognise that departmental officials who go around consulting on behalf of the government, who are talking to people, do not know the answers to many of the questions. They freely admit they do not know the answers to many of the questions. That is a very positive thing in a way, because they do not try and con people by saying, 'Look, it's okay.' In fact, what they are doing is saying to people is: 'Because of the potential risks, what we want to do is operate on the side of caution and, if, for example, you are drinking bore water from an area which has been tested to be contaminated, we suggest you drink other water, which we will supply.' That is a very profound and good thing to do. But then people ask a series of other questions, such as: 'What do you know about these products?' 'Not a lot.' 'What do you think the medical impacts will be?' 'We don't know.' 'What is the international experience?' 'Well, we're not quite sure of that either.'

It seems to me that this is creating a great deal of uncertainty and concern and, indeed, harm in many communities, as the member for Paterson knows only too well in her own community. In her case, I think it was partly brought about by the stupidity of the department of environment people in New South Wales making a pre-emptive declaration on the land around the base. What they need to be doing is working in partnership with the Commonwealth and not raising fears but being alive to the fact that people's relevant and important concerns need to be addressed. As the member for Canberra said, the next set of testing will take place over the next 12 months. That is simply not good enough. Again, I do not want to somehow mean that the departmental officials are not doing their job; but the fact is that they need additional resources to do the work that is required to satisfy the concerns of people in these communities right across the country. It is very simple: make the resources available, take some responsibility and make sure that the people who are concerned about this have their concerns properly addressed and their fears allayed. If you do not, what you are doing is perpetrating something upon those communities which they do not need and which is not welcome.

And it is not good for government. It is certainly not good for Defence Force officials who are working in communities where they are trying to manage relationships. These are important Defence assets. And it is not only Defence; the civilian community needs to be concerned about the impact of this on civilian airports and in fire and emergency services right across the country. Yet they appear not to be involved in this discussion. It seems to me it is about time we took a whole-of-government approach looking not only across federal government but also state jurisdictions. The Civil Aviation Authority ought to be heavily involved in these discussions because they run airports which have used this firm in the same way the Defence Force has. In one sense, the Defence Force has been on the front foot—although they do not have sufficient information. We need a lot more out of this government. I say to the three ministers: one of you take responsibility, for God's sake!

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