Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade, I present the committee's report, incorporating a dissenting report, entitled Inquiry into PFAS remediation in and around Defence bases: Final report.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—This is the third and final report of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade on the national PFAS Investigation and Management Program. The committee has consistently heard about the stress and uncertainty that PFAS remediation places on residents in affected communities. The committee heard about the lack of government information, about a lack of trust in government information, which has developed in and around the communities impacted by PFAS. It is essential that the Australian government ensure that this is open, direct and timely when information and updates are provided to the community. This should hold whether there is good news, bad news or even no progress to communicate. Those communities have demonstrated that they need to be kept in the information loop where this contaminant is concerned.

The committee has made eight recommendations to the Australian government, which provide some practical suggestions that may assist the government in ensuring that the PFAS response meets the needs of these communities. The committee heard pfas.gov.au, the website, is intended to be the central information starting point for people. It's where they are directed to go for information. However, during the course of this inquiry, the committee noted that this website went over 500 days without any news or new updates, especially at a time when people were relying, because of COVID, on virtual information. It just seemed outstanding to the community members—shocking, in fact—that the website that is supposed to be the key portal for them to receive information had been left untouched for almost two years. Surely there'd been work done in that time.

The committee has recommended that the Australian government ensure that each federal government department publish quarterly updates on work to date on pfas.gov.au. This will provide more assurance for communities that work is not stalling or, in fact, anything is being done at all. One community witness recognised that the Department of Defence is having, 'A red-hot crack at cleaning up this mess.' Indeed, Mr Lindsay Clout from my electorate spoke of that. I know that he has been heavily involved. I want to thank him and all the community members who took the time to come before our committee and contribute to this report. They have done a really great job in communicating what has been going on in their lives over the past six years. It's been a travesty for many of them.

The evidence received by the committee from government agencies revealed the range of work being undertaken, from the establishment of national standards for chemical regulation to the testing of remediation technologies. And there has been advancement in remediation technologies, and this is a good thing, but people must know about what's going on. PFAS regulation and remediation is a complex issue that extends across federal, state and territory governments. This understandably leads to complex governance arrangements, cross-jurisdictional arrangements, that can be very detailed and confusing for the community who are trying to wade through the information. This understandably leads to frustration in the community, when they feel as though they are being ignored, or, indeed, there is buck shifting from one state government department to the other.

Collaboration across governments is essential to avoid residents being unable to find vital information due to layers of bureaucracy and, quite frankly, losing faith in government at all levels that they are being given or rendered any assistance at all.

The committee also recommended the Australian government work with state and territory governments to publish regular updates on PFAS.gov.au as well as to coordinate information-sharing where appropriate and determine access to airfields on Commonwealth land for PFAS related investigations.

The committee was very grateful to the researchers and remediation technology developers that explained their findings and latest work at public hearings. Indeed, there have been some incredible ingenuity and technology developments in relation to PFAS and its remediation—in fact, it is world leading. The committee has recommended that the evidence from the emerging research on therapeutic blood donations be considered by the Australian government. We must know what this chemical is doing not only to our environment but also to our people as individuals when it is in their bodies for up to nine years. We must know and we must be part of the international research that is going on here. We cannot turn our back on that.

Ultimately the committee heard that issues affecting residents in PFAS affected communities are far from being resolved. People cannot be left feeling as though they have been abandoned by their government. The Department of Defence acknowledges that seeing change in PFAS flows will be a slow process; nonetheless we must continue the process.

The committee particularly thanks the community members who have been tireless in fighting and speaking up, in again raking over the coals of the trauma of their lives over the last six years. I also want to thank my committee and colleagues for their support during this inquiry. I really want to also thank the secretariat, who have done a magnificent job. This is a long and drawn-out and, to be frank, extremely complex problem. We cannot turn our back on it. We must continue to pursue excellence and we must continue to pursue justice for every Australian that has been impacted by PFAS chemicals. I commend this report to the House.

See this speech in context