SENATE

94 SENATE Thursday, 13 October 2016
Senator Cameron: The minister has been there once.
Senator WILLIAMS: What did you do?
Senator Cameron: The minister has been there once.
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator O'Sullivan): Order on my left!
Senator WILLIAMS: So what did you do in those six years? You did nothing. You are just a great political
hand grenade thrower in this place, where it is all about saying—
The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Address your remarks through the chair, Senator Williams.
Senator WILLIAMS: 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.
Senator RHIANNON (New South Wales) (17:29): The Williamtown story of contamination has thrown the
lives of so many people into uncertainty and disarray. It is actually a story that is repeated, we are learning, in
many other areas around the country, and it really does underline why this government has to act urgently. People
are living with possible health problems, the loss of property value and the inability to continue their lives. Some
of them have lost their livelihood completely; fishing folk in and around Williamtown are an example of that.
Each time I visit this area I find that the mental health of many of the local people is deteriorating, and it is
understandable. When you have got your future ahead of you, and part of your future is where you live, your
income, your property and home, and you are uncertain if you should even be living there but you cannot see any
way out because your property now has no value, it clearly is incredibly alarming.
One of the saddest stories I heard was about a young couple who had decided to move from Sydney to this area
to start their home. They liked the semirural lifestyle. She fell pregnant—after very much looking forward to
starting a family—and then, while she was pregnant, the story of the contamination broke. She was then not sure
if she should breastfeed the baby—if that was best, or if it was not best. Might she be poisoning her baby through
her breast milk? These are the questions that people are asking themselves and that really underline that sense of
insecurity that so many people are living with.
The banks are now becoming a big part of this story. The Commonwealth Bank has sent foreclosure letters to
residents in Salt Ash, one of the areas affected by PFOS and PFOA contamination. We have heard from the
Commonwealth Bank that it is not planning to foreclose—it has backed down on that, and it has said, 'Well, that
was a bit of a mistake.' It is actually claiming that sending the letters was an administrative error. But anybody
who has been involved in this crisis would have to be very sceptical of that claim.
The fact is that residents' homes have been devalued, residents have had difficulty getting bank loans, and
resident have had difficulty selling. Many are begging the Department of Defence to buy them out. Again, that is
something that has been repeated so often when I meet with locals at Williamtown, particularly because many of
them went to the Senate inquiry that we had at the end of last year. That gave them some hope—because the
Department of Defence have to turn up—that Defence would listen and then respond.
The government admits total responsibility. There is no wriggle room and no excuses. They admit that they
have caused this contamination. So, understandably, people expect, 'Well, this is the government. They will do the
right thing. They have admitted that they have made this very serious mistake and we are now living with
contamination.' But there is nothing. The months keep rolling by. So this issue about the value of people's
property and their future is becoming bigger and bigger.
CHAMBER