TIM MORRIS
Parliament has risen and will not sit again until 29th of September. I have attached for your information and interest hansards and a motion from last weeks Parliament sitting session in which Tim Morris MP and Cassy O’Connor MP pursued the Government over the ongoing contamination of Tasmania’s water supplies.
Please read the comments by the Minister during the Matter of Public Importance debate – as they specifically relate to the presence of Bisphenol A found in the groundwater tests. It appears the source is the sample bottle!
The Hansard record:
WATER CONTAMINATION
Matters of Public Importance
[11.21 a.m.]
Mr MORRIS (Lyons – Motion) – Mr Speaker, I move-
That the House take note of the following matter: contamination of Tasmania’s waterways and ground water.
I bring forward this crucial matter of public importance again for debate in this Parliament this morning. It is not so long since we last debated this matter. Since then more testing has been done and it has been discovered that contamination of our waterways, in particular the Duck River, goes on and gets worse. Also, we have now discovered, after a number of tests on our ground water from various bores, that they too have serious levels of contamination.
Minister, we now have the CEO of the Seafood Industry Council writing to you because the council is seriously concerned that this ongoing contamination may well have a detrimental effect on their industry. I gather your office has been quick off the mark to ring Neil and see what is going on, so you have received the letter.
Mr Llewellyn - Yes, we have responded to him as well.
Mr MORRIS – Good. You have received the letter. You would not acknowledge that in your answer to my question to you this morning.
Mr Llewellyn - You asked too many parts to the question. You cannot remember them all when you get up.
Mr MORRIS – You do have a memory problem, Minister. There were two parts to the question and you did not answer either. You just read from a pre-prepared release.
I looked up the flood monitoring for the Duck River on 11 July. Not only was the MCPA continuing to flow down the river at trace detection or above but it is now also contaminated with 2,4-D. Where is all that going, Minister? It is going down into Duck Bay. Minister, you have a real problem here, and your solution is to do more and more testing. I am pleased that you are publishing the results.
Mr Llewellyn - I am sure you are.
Mr MORRIS – Because what you are showing us, Minister, is that the more you test the worse the problem is. We are telling you there is a problem so you are doing more testing and then you tell us the problem is even worse. I want to know what it is going to take before you will actually do something. I have been raising this matter in this House for years and years and years. What have you done in that time, Minister? You have had a review of these spraying code of practice guidelines. How long has that been going on for and what has been the outcome? Have they changed? No, not one iota. Have you prosecuted anyone? Yes, I think you did prosecute Gunns at one point for the contamination of the Macquarie River with simazine that lasted for more than 12 months and went right down and into Launceston’s water supply. But that is all. We have dozens of contamination events that have been picked up since 2005 when your testing started.
Let me come to the Coal River for a moment, Minister. Have you looked collectively at what has happened in the Coal River? From April 2008: metaxyl, 0.10 parts per billion; additionally, primicarb at 0.08 parts per billion; follow-up samples were taken with no detection and the investigation was closed. On 10 July, the next round of testing, MCPA was found at 0.10 parts per billion; follow-up testing was done and another sample taken at the Brown Mountain Road Bridge tested positive for MCPA at 0.22. One at the Richmond Bridge showed 0.10 and at the monitoring station it was 0.15. Further sampling taken on 19 August did not detect and the file was closed. On 10 July, primicarb was found at 0.054 parts; the follow-up test did not detect it. At the same time there was a further detection upstream at White Kangaroo Rivulet of diazinon at 0.10 parts per billion, the guideline value; the follow-up did not find anything. Nothing was detected in the next three rounds, which was lovely, but then we start getting into a situation this year, at 2 June, when primicarb and boscalid were found. A follow-up detected boscalid, hexazinone and simazine. On 17 June a test showed hexazinone and trace detections of simazine and primicarb. It was there for quite a lengthy time. Four days later further samples still showed trace detections of hexazinone, simazine and primicarb. Interestingly, at the same time, there was another sample taken at the Commercial Road bridge, which was a different water flow to the main Coal River flow, and that turned up boscalid and metaxyl. We have a chemical cocktail running down the Coal River and you are doing nothing about it.
Time expired.
[11.28 a.m.]
Mrs NAPIER (Bass) - The State Liberals welcome this being brought forward as a matter of public importance. I think there is a degree of general concern within the community at to what potential links there might be between the incidence of pesticides and chemicals that are being found in our water, whether it is scientifically associated and whether there is any causal relationship between the incidence of the use of pesticides and chemicals and endocrine-related diseases and disorders and cancer.
I know there has been a degree of research. I have had a number of briefings on it myself and I am of the view that if we can establish that there is a link then we have no alternative but to act upon the matter. However, I think that Dr Roscoe Taylor, in charge of public health, would have exactly the same concerns. I am not the scientist who can –
Mr Morris – But the politics stop him acting.
Mrs NAPIER - I will have my say and then you can have yours. I am admitting that I am not a scientist but I am aware of the concerns and that is where I look to people like Dr Roscoe Taylor to ascertain whether there is a causal relationship or whether it is just a correlation relationship, and that is the really difficult part of this whole debate.
I am pleased that Tasmania has a better standard of water testing than other States but, as the minister said, that does not make it okay. I have in front of me the initial work on testing ground water. That is very concerning, particularly the incidence of bisphenol-A, which was present in all circumstances. That is an industrial chemical associated with plastics. We are being told by the APBMA that it should not be there, and I think it is alarming to find it. The good thing is that the testing is being done, and I am of the view that we need to improve the system we use to monitor our waterways and our ground water. But we are at least doing that testing.
I have had a number of talks with people within the farming industry about the incidence of MCPA, a weedkiller basically, because it is not so much about forestry, where there have been significant changes, as it is about farming. Last night a number of us had an opportunity to enjoy some of Tasmania’s beautiful wines, and we talked about increasing the productivity and attractiveness of the Tasmanian wine industry tenfold. But the implication of that is that we need to be real about the chemicals used in vineyards.
Mr Morris – It wouldn’t sell too well if it had MCPA in it.
Mrs NAPIER - No, it does not necessarily explain that one, but weeds are a problem for farmers, and it is important that we have information provided not only by the seafood industry – as has already been indicated by local councillors and mayors in areas where these readings have been found by individual seafood companies – but also by the TFGA and by farmers, to let us get to the bottom of this, because we need to protect our clean and green reputation. You have to be able to prove it.
It is something that John Cleary, when the new environmental planning systems were being set up in the early 1990s, was very much directed towards. He said that we needed to demonstrate that Tasmania had sustainable planning and industry systems; we needed to test and prove that we were clean and green. He was right in pursuing those reforms early on in the Groom Government. We have come a long way since then. But this is an important debate; in a number of underground tests the level that was found, for example of atrazine and associated products was15 times the European Union guideline. That in itself is a point of concern; it is an important issue that we need to look at and something that I hope the Health Department is actively involved in.
I note that Dr Roscoe Taylor has made a number of comments on this issue recently, and I have met with people who have argued that we should ban the triazine group. I have met with scientists from the US, and they present a pretty compelling case. But then I also look at the comments from the APBMA and how the current levels we are finding relate to the World Health Organisation standards. We are trying to interpret what the science is telling us about the standards we should adopt here and therefore the practices that need to be changed, particularly in the area of agriculture, but also within forestry. The State Liberals are certainly very keen to make sure that we adopt high standards but that we work upon the basis of science.
Time expired.
[11.35 a.m.]
Mr LLEWELLYN (Lyons – Minister for Primary Industries and Water) – The member for Lyons, Mr Morris, raises a number of matters and while he said there were only two matters in the question asked originally, there were in fact a whole lot of other implicit questions that were raised at the time. I will try to go through some of those in the short time I have to debate this motion.
I received a letter on 3 July from the Tasmanian Seafood Industry Council who were concerned about measurements that were taken in the Duck River. I responded on 27 July to Mr Stump, the CEO of the Tasmanian Seafood Industry Council and, amongst other things, told him about the measuring of MCPA in particular but also the concerns the department has and the actions that have been taken in regard to addressing this specific issue and the involvement of the TFGA and so on.
I will quote a couple of paragraphs from the letter. I said:
‘In the case of the ongoing Duck River contamination, the contamination is a result of spray activity which is covered by agvet legislation. I understand that the Chemical Management Branch have consulted officers representing the EPA and the EPA advise that they are satisfied with the approach of the Chemical Management Branch as detailed in this letter. However, I agree that this ongoing contamination has serious concerns, particularly to oyster growers in the catchment and, as such, my department has written to the TFGA suggesting that it would be prudent for it to take a leadership role in addressing and resolving the issues along with the department. They have been advised that if this issue is not resolved by industry and contamination events continue and do not meet community expectation, the department would propose regulatory measures to address the problem.’
That is just one issue and there is a series of other things I said in that letter.
The member for Bass also raised the issue of the 60 bores that were tested for the presence of pesticide and the member for Lyons, Mr Morris, mentioned that aspect as well. It is a fact that there were some detections of atrazine in those 60 bore samples at Port Arthur and Ross, the pesticide 2,4-D was detected at Parkham in the Rubicon catchment, and MCPA was detected at Togari. One of the major concerns was that the industrial chemical bisphenol-A was detected at some sites. This chemical is widely used in the production of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins. The detection is a surprise, as the bore sample sites are not near highly industrialised zones or waste disposal sites, where such detections might be more likely.
The next comment I think is an important one. Obviously we need to follow up on it but the comment is – and this is the information I get from my officers within the Chemical Management Branch – that it is likely that the contamination is the result of sample contamination from the polycarbonate plastic sampling equipment or from some plastic surfaces within the bore head of some sites. The source of contamination is being further examined. I just want to make the point here that while that chemical was found, it was at very small levels, which could be accounted for by the fact that you just put the water in a polycarbonate plastic container.
Mr Morris – This is distracting from the issue, Minister.
Mr LLEWELLYN - But the levels we are measuring and talking about are very small. They are at the extreme end of measurement in many cases. In some cases they are not and obviously we follow up those cases wherever we possibly can.
I made the point earlier that although this is an issue that the Government takes seriously and is moving to address, I agree completely with the member for Bass, Mrs Napier, when she talks about scientists and people who are concerned from a health point of view. Dr Taylor from the Health department, who is in charge of public health, has the oversight of these measurements and if he is concerned about the issue with regard to public health, he will make the point. That is how it should be. We follow this up from an agricultural and forestry point of view but the levels of concern are certainly not at the levels that have been indicated here in Australia and in Tasmania or, indeed, across the world -
Mrs Napier - There is very high public concern, particularly amongst women.
Mr LLEWELLYN - I know, and one of the reasons is that people keep hyping it up. We provide this information and I think this is an area where one should not be playing politics. I am as seriously concerned about this as I am sure Mr Morris is.
Mr Morris – Oh, you are not, Minister! You have been the minister for most of the last decade and what have you done?
Mr LLEWELLYN - You are accusing me again. It is like the other member for Denison, Ms O’Connor, who talks to me about other things and reckons I am not concerned about them because she has a particular attitude.
Mr Morris – Your lack of action, Minister, is the evidence that we have.
Ms O’Connor – Words are cheap, Minister.
Mr LLEWELLYN - They are, particularly your words.
Time expired.
[11.42 a.m.]
Ms O’CONNOR (Denison) – Mr Deputy Speaker, there is something so wrong, so wicked and harmful to human health happening in Tasmania that it staggers me that we are still just talking about it in such a casual way and nothing has been done about it in order to protect human health. The slow poisoning of communities and the Tasmanian people has been going on for decades. As my colleague, Mr Morris, has explained in detail, our waterways are being poisoned. Many of the 55 rivers that are monitored have had pesticides detected in them that are extremely harmful to human health – MCPA, 2,4-D, simazine, atrazine, hexazinone – a virtual chemical soup. In all, 19 chemicals -
Mr Llewellyn - You see, that is just emotional stuff.
Ms O’CONNOR – It is absolutely true. We are talking about 19 chemicals that, by their very nature, are toxic to life. That is what they are meant to do, to kill weeds and pests. They are toxic to life and they are used in increasing quantities, unregulated, in Tasmania. They are sprayed on forestry plantations, farmlands, sporting venues, roadsides and Tasmanian gardens. The people of Hobart discovered earlier this year that they were drinking atrazine and there is precisely nothing that they can do about it.
Unlike the individual passive smoker, pretty well everyone in Tasmania is at risk from being passive consumers of pesticides and that risk, as the science has demonstrated, is cancer and chronic diseases such as Parkinson’s and diabetes. Tasmania has the highest cancer rates in the nation. In 25 years they have jumped by a staggering one-third across both sexes. We have the highest rates of Parkinson’s disease and the highest new incidences of diabetes in the nation. Despite the overwhelming body of evidence and the fact that the EU has banned the use of these carcinogenic chemicals, the Minister for Health said in budget Estimates this year – and I do reiterate this because it was such a staggeringly ignorant and irresponsible comment:
‘There is no scientific evidence and it is unsupported in both established and emerging research.’
If there is no science, why did 31 scientists and medical practitioners write to the minister and her colleague, the Minister for Primary Industries and Water, in June this year and say:
‘We, the undersigned, scientists and medical practitioners request that you take the necessary administrative and/or legal actions to ban aerial spraying of pesticides and prohibit the use and sale throughout the State of all pesticides which adversely affect human health as defined by the recent European Union directive regarding pesticides.’
This is a directive based on science and an administration that has the guts to do something about it in order to protect human health. The EU says:
‘Certain highly toxic chemicals, namely those which are carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction, will be banned unless exposure to them would in practice be negligible. The same applies to substances which are endocrine disrupting, those which are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic, and those which are very persistent and very bioaccumulative.’
These scientists have said to the two ministers they wrote to:
‘While links between pesticides and many forms of illness have long been known, there is increasing medical research evidence linking minuscule parts, minuscule doses, parts per trillion, of pesticides to endocrine disruption and some cancers. Such effects include interference with the communication system of glands, hormones and cellular receptors that control the body’s internal functions. Endocrine disruption can result in a range of illnesses and has been linked to breast, testicular and prostate cancer, as well as impaired fertility.’
These 31 scientists and medical practitioners make this direct appeal to this Government:
‘We therefore appeal for the complete abolition of these substances as per the EU directive, and in particular the banning of aerial spraying, which results in the potential contamination of much of our beautiful but far from clean, green and pristine State.’
Also, if there is no science, why did the highly respected Endocrine Society, an international medical society with over 14 000 members in 100 countries, also in June this year find that exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals is a growing threat to human health and wellbeing. I again draw the minister’s attention to the Endocrine Society statement that:
‘The evidence for adverse reproductive outcomes, infertility, cancers, malformations from exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals is strong and there is mounting evidence for effects on other endocrine systems, including thyroid, neuroendocrine, obesity and metabolism.’
Minister, if there is no science proving the toxicity to life of pesticides such as atrazine, what is this paper from the UCLA Department of Cellular Medicine, which says:
‘Numerous studies in fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals all suggest that atrazine can alter normal endocrine, neuroendocrine and immune responses. Atrazine is mutating fish.’?
We are biological creatures. The evidence is in, the science is in, the Health minister is in denial and the Government is in denial. While they are doing this, our waterways are being poisoned, people are drinking triazine chemicals, so I would urge the minister to get her head out of the sand and read the science. It is actually her responsibility to do it and to act to bring Tasmania into the twenty-first century by banning the use of these highly toxic chemicals in order to better look after the health of Tasmanians, which right now, as a result of this Government’s policies and inaction, is severely compromised because these nasty, deadly chemicals are being sprayed into our water catchments.
This Government has a moral obligation to do something about it, not pretend that it does not have the capacity to do something about it, not pretend that because these chemicals are found in parts per trillion that it is not an issue, because it is an issue. People are actually dying as a result of your Government’s policies. You have a responsibility to take action, to read the science and do something about it.
Time expired.
[11.49 a.m.]
Mr GREEN (Braddon) – Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise to make a contribution in this debate because I think it is important to put on the record that this side of the House is concerned to ensure that the waterways of Tasmania are safe and not contaminated. That is why we have monitoring programs established on a significant number of waterways right around Tasmania, to ensure that the Government is across any levels of contamination that might exist.
I just want to remind members, particularly the Greens, who often target forestry and in particular Forestry Tasmania with respect to use of atrazine, that Forestry Tasmania does not use atrazine. The chemicals that are utilised in Tasmania or anywhere in Australia have to meet the national standard. So it is not as if the chemicals themselves have been banned nationally or internationally. It is worth putting on the record again because the Greens often say ‘forestry’ but mean Forestry Tasmania as well. With the use of 1080, for example, Forestry Tasmania has stopped using that particular chemical as well.
Mr Morris – Yes, I think we encouraged them to that end.
Mr GREEN - You might want to claim that but in fact it was this side of the House, through the Tasmania Together process, that established the guidelines with respect to the use of 1080 in Tasmania. As a result of that the use of 1080 in Tasmania has continued to fall. We have ensured that Forestry Tasmania, through announcements by the Premier of the day and myself as minister for forestry at that stage, banned the use of 1080 in Forestry Tasmania and set an example here and for the rest of the country. That is not suggesting that 1080 is not and cannot be used legitimately in Tasmania. It is used by farmers and by other forestry companies from time to time.
The practice was endorsed by Ms Putt, when she was the leader of the Greens, to reduce the number of browsing animals given that, in some places in Tasmania, numbers of browsing animals had exploded to the extent that it was impossible to grow crops or trees. She endorsed that some shooting of animals to reduce their numbers was appropriate. It would have been even more appropriate had we been able to commercialise some aspects of that harvest, particularly skins and meat, given international demand for those products. However, we have not been successful in convincing the Commonwealth to allow that to happen.
I applaud the minister. I do not condemn him at all for the work that he is doing. I applaud him for the fact that we are conducting chemical testing on 55 waterways within Tasmania for 19 chemicals, along with automatic flood sampling of the George, Esperance, Little Swanport and Duck rivers following heavy rain events. Of course there have been some very heavy rain events in recent times. It also highlights the transient nature of pesticides. There is intermittency with respect to the detection of those pesticides, which you highlighted yourself as you read through the various testing figures that have been reported. It shows that there is intermittency. The minister is not being irresponsible in any way given that health authorities take responsibility for any alerts that might need to occur as a result of chemicals.
Mr Morris – The minister is completely absolved, is he?
Mr GREEN - I know you claim to know everything but we have regimes established in Tasmania to ensure proper health standards in this State. We have, in an open and transparent way, provided the information for each and every person in Tasmania to understand in terms of detection of any chemicals in our waterways. How much more transparent can you be with respect to that? But of course the Greens want to politicise that, day in and day out, to try to make out that somehow this Government is going about poisoning the Tasmanian people, which of course is a load of rubbish. Mr Deputy Speaker, I think it is high time that the Greens took some responsibility for their nasty -
Mr Morris – I take full responsibility for every word I say.
Mr GREEN - They talk about words being cheap. Well, I say in their case their words are cheap and nasty, and they ought to start thinking about what they are saying to the Tasmanian people, because it is no good frightening them.
Time expired.
Matter noted.
…
Thursday 27th of August, House of Assembly, Tasmania
WATER – PESTICIDE DETECTION
[10.51 a.m.]
Mr MORRIS (Question) – My question is to the Minister for Primary Industries and Water – and I am tempted to add a further comment. Minister, the issues of pesticide and herbicide contamination of the water in this State get worse and worse every year. You do nothing except more testing, including taking more than four years to completely finalise the new spraying guidelines. Can you confirm that you have recently received a letter from the CEO of the Tasmanian Seafood Industry Council raising concerns from oyster growers in the Smithton area about the possible impacts on the oyster industry from continual presence of herbicides in rivers flowing into estuaries where oysters are grown? What will you do to ensure that the very valuable oyster industry is not damaged by this chronic contamination that continues to be detected in rivers such as the Duck, George and Coal that flow into oyster-growing beds? What is your response to the Seafood Industry Council? Finally, has any testing been done on oysters as part of the contamination follow-up investigations to determine whether those oysters have been contaminated by pesticides and, if not, why not?
Mr LLEWELLYN - Mr Speaker, as the member knows only too well, the department conducts testing on 55 waterways within Tasmania for 19 chemicals along with automatic flood sampling in the George, Esperance, Little Swanport and Duck rivers following heavy rainfall events. The department recently advised, and there have been questions and comments made about this in Parliament, that automatic flood sampling in the Duck River near Smithton has returned some positive readings for the herbicide MCPA.
Mr Morris – And 2,4-D, Minister.
Mr LLEWELLYN - There was a flood reading range of 0.85 down to 0.3 parts per billion of MCPA on 27 April 2009. The automatic sampler was also triggered on 15 May with readings from 0.91 down to 0.14 parts per billion and again on 7 June, 27 June and 1 July readings ranged from 1.49 parts per billion down to trace-level detections. Given significant rainfall preceded these events it is likely that these detections are the result of run-off after agricultural application. The chemical is used for the control of broad-leafed weeds in pasture including thistles and capeweed. The contamination of MCPA in the Duck River has been an ongoing concern. The department has been undertaking regular testing of the Duck River in an attempt to get a better understanding of the nature of the contamination events.
My department has found that the contamination of the river is widespread, particularly after significant rainfall events in spring and autumn when MCPA is applied by more than 100 or more landowners managing pasture in the catchment. While the levels have been generally at or around the level of detection - and I need to make this point and I certainly will when the matter of public importance comes up later this morning – most of the readings that we get from the monitoring of chemicals in the waterways are almost undetectable; they are very small amounts.
Mr Morris – But they’re there, Minister.
Mr LLEWELLYN - They should not be there and that is why we do the testing, but I would say to you that if we applied the same testing in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia or anywhere else in Australia, you would see infinitely higher levels in the waterways there than there are here. In fact those other States do not do the testing to the level that we do.
Mr Booth – So that makes it all right, does it?
Mr LLEWELLYN - No, it does not make it right, and that is why we do things better here in Tasmania.
Mr Booth – Well, why don’t you ban some of the pesticides?
Mr LLEWELLYN - You can make allegations about these issues and try to whip up emotion in the community and concern for people, but we are getting on with the job of trying to resolve these sorts of issues.
Greens members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER - Order.
Mr LLEWELLYN - On the issue of chemical control, a new set of regulations is currently with Parliamentary Counsel for drafting. Once they are drafted I will be releasing those regulations about aerial spraying and ground spraying associated with chemicals in the State. I will have something more to say about this on the matter of public importance.
…
NOTICE OF MOTION
27 AUGUST 2009
Cassy O’Connor on tomorrow to move –
That the House:
Notes that cancer rates in Tasmania have dramatically increased between 1980 and 2005, up 33% for males and 30% for females and that Tasmania now has the highest age-adjusted rate of cancer (excluding skin cancer) in Australia;
Notes with concern that this rise in cancer rates, coincides with increased rates of acute illness in the population, including diabetes and Parkinsons disease, and that – while there will be a range of contributing factors – this sharp increase in chronic disease rates correlates with the widespread and largely unregulated use of endocrine disrupting pesticides such as Simazine and Atrazine in Tasmania;
Acknowledges that the Health Minister was clearly in denial when she said in Budget Estimates this year that “There is no scientific evidence and it is unsupported in both established and emerging research.”
Presents the scientific evidence to the Health Minister in the form of a seminal report issued in June this year by the highly respected Endocrine Society, an international medical society of over 14 000 members in 100 countries, which found that exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals is a growing threat to human health and well being;
Draws the Minister’s attention to the Endocrine Society’s statement that, “The evidence for adverse reproductive outcomes (infertility, cancers, malformations) from exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals is strong, and there is mounting evidence for effects on other endocrine systems, including thyroid, neuroendocrine, obesity and metabolism.”
Further, calls on the Minister to read the Endocrine Society’s seminal report and heed its call on policy makers to apply the Precautionary Principle in relation to the use of these chemicals, and move to ban their use in Tasmania in order to better protect the health and wellbeing of the Tasmanian people.
