Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (23:48): My adjournment debate is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change and concerns the Environment Protection Authority Victoria’s (EPA) responsibility to protect the environment enjoyed by the communities of Bacchus Marsh and Maddingley. Last month’s external review of Victoria’s environment protection agency could not have been more damning. It found a catalogue of failures throughout the organisation so bad that even government MP Frank McGuire, the minister’s own colleague, described it as an indictment. Of the many findings most worrying for my constituents in Bacchus Marsh and Maddingley were those that which detailed the lack of information sharing and the failure of staff to act on intelligence provided about potentially dangerous issues. Consultants Ernst & Young found:

Public intelligence data and information was not effectively used to inform the proactive identification of emerging issues or behaviours that may result in future non-compliance or risks to community safety.

They also described alarming failures in scrutiny of waste transport certificates and the prescribed industrial waste they reference.

This has come as no surprise to residents of the West Wimmera, who last year expressed their anger at the EPA’s performance in dealing with the 4 million litres of chemicals illegally buried near Kaniva. Now residents on the other side of Western Victoria, in Bacchus Marsh and Maddingley, are concerned about the existing operations and future plans of the Maddingly Brown Coal site and the EPA’s willingness and ability to intervene. The MBC site is already the subject of action by Moorabool Shire Council over alleged breaches of the site’s existing permit.

The local community is concerned that the perceived lax standards of operation now in place could spell even greater danger if approval is given for PFAS-affected soil from the West Gate Tunnel Project to be dumped at the site. The action I seek is for the minister to explain how the EPA has remedied the failure so damningly reported to use:

Public intelligence data and information … to inform the proactive identification of emerging issues … that may result in future non-compliance or risks to community safety.

The action I further seek is for the minister to investigate the EPA’s scrutiny of MBC’s operations to date, to give an assurance she will intervene where necessary and to assure the public that the organisation’s previous failings will not contribute to environmental and health damage in the Bacchus Marsh and Maddingley communities.