Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:59): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change and concerns the appearance last month on ABC radio Melbourne’s Conversation Hour by respected occupational and environmental health expert Professor Malcolm Sim. Among a plethora of awards, titles and career achievements, Professor Sim has been a director of the Monash Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health for decades, editor-in-chief of the Occupational and Environmental Medicine journal and chief investigator in a number of studies of health effects and cancer and mortality risk in industrial situations. He has received the College Medal for outstanding service from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and in 2019 was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his service to occupational and environmental medicine.

The Conversation Hour looked at PFAS, a bioaccumulative chemical which does not break down and can be concentrated in the food chain and which testing shows is present in soil to be removed from the West Gate Tunnel sites. Professor Sim’s comments were not off the cuff but a considered contribution to the debate and the result of years of research experience. His approach was not alarmist, but he made a number of points relevant to the proposal to dump potentially PFAS-affected soil in Bacchus Marsh. On the subject of absorption into the body he said:

… the main way it gets into the body is through eating or drinking it. So it gets into the stomach and down to the intestine and gets absorbed across there fairly well.

Given the topography of the Maddingley tip and its location next to watercourses serving extensive and valuable horticultural production, this is hugely concerning. Professor Sim was specifically asked about the West Gate Tunnel waste and said, and I quote:

… this is really challenging to try and find an area where it’s safe to dump this contaminated soil, so you really need to look at whether there are going to be areas nearby where there might be groundwater or there are foods being grown, whether that’s crops or whether it’s animals, and make sure that there are no exposure pathways which would allow it to get into those water or food supplies.

As someone who has walked around the hilly, windy proposed site and followed the watercourses which surround it down to the areas where crops are grown, this is alarming. So the action I seek from the minister is an explanation of the government’s position on the emerging risks of PFAS. Is it accepted that it can leach into ground and surface water? Does it break down? Does it bioaccumulate, and if so, how can low levels ever be safe?