John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

My sincere apologies, Mr Acting Deputy President. I did not realise. I will certainly come back to you. Mr Acting Deputy President, when it comes to political hand grenades, Senator Cameron is probably the best chucker of those around the place. You may have even experienced some of that in your own personal life in the Senate here, Mr Acting Deputy President.

Instead of making a political issue out of this for those people of Salt Ash, let us try to work together to see if we can get a solution. I thank Senator Burston for bringing this to the chamber. Just out of what you have done here today, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, of course, this will get more publicity and give more support to the people of Salt Ash. As I said, I cannot comment on Oakey. I am not familiar with the situation at Oakey, but clearly there is something similarly wrong up there. Let us hope that the contamination, as I said, is no longer being spread, that they can determine the borders of how far the contamination has spread and that they can then, perhaps, clean it up through neutralising the chemicals through some way or another—some design of a balancing chemical. If they do not do that, then I believe those people deserve compensation. I will repeat it again: if you have your place devalued through no fault of your own, the people—the department that are responsible for that devaluation should compensate you.

That is my contribution. I thank Senator Burston once again for bringing this very important issue to the attention of the Senate.