Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning I would like to talk about a most appalling, ill-considered decision by the New South Wales Planning Assessment Commission to approve a concrete-recycling plant at Moorebank.

In this decision they have simply ignored the facts. They have shown a complete ignorance of the dangers of particulate matter in air pollution. And the format of the decision and the way they have gone about this places real question marks over the credibility and the legitimacy of the New South Wales Planning Assessment Commission.

The basis of my beef is around the complete failure by the proponents of this development to do any assessment or any modelling of what is called PM2.5 particulate matter. This was drawn to the specific attention of the Planning Assessment Commission during the public hearing. The Planning Assessment Commission were made fully aware that the proponent had failed in its duty to model or to do any assessment of this dangerous pollution, and yet they simply closed their eyes and their ears.

The place to start in this is that there is a requirement—a statutory requirement—under the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority, the EPA, set out under what is called the Approved Methods for the modelling and assessment of air pollutants in New South Wales. Clause 3.1 of this assessment guideline says that all sources of air pollution must be identified. All sources! It is not a matter of picking and choosing which ones you think you can get away with and leaving out the harmful ones. All sources must be identified. This is where the failure comes from.

Particulate matter—a definition—is the microscopic solid and liquid matter suspended in the Earth's atmosphere. It is not one particular chemical substance. Its sources are extremely varied and its classification is by size rather than by substance. There are three main classifications. There is what is known as PM10, which is coarse particulate matter; there is PM2.5, which is fine particulate matter; and there is PM0.1, which is known as ultrafine particulate matter. Each of them are a subset of each other. The academic literature makes it clear that particulate matter is a known source—fine, coarse and ultrafine particulate matter—from concrete recycling. That is beyond doubt.

Why should we be specifically concerned about particulate matter? On 17 October 2003, the International Agency for Research on Cancer announced classified particulate matter is carcinogenic to humans. This is not CO2 or something speculative; this is a carcinogen and it is based on sufficient evidence that exposure to it causes lung cancer. That is what we are talking about. Yet it was not modelled. There was no assessment. It is the fine particulate matter that we should be most concerned about. Even the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority have stated that:

The particles of most concern are fine particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5). Unlike larger particles, these smaller particles invisible to the naked eye can be breathed deep into the lungs and even pass into the bloodstream.

Yet, this was not modelled. This was not assessed. It is a known source. It was drawn to their attention and yet they failed to look at it. This is an absolute disgrace and a complete failure of this New South Wales Planning Assessment Commission. Why, perhaps, did they not want to model it?

We have some standards that are currently being negotiated which recommend that we should have a maximum concentration at eight microns per cubic metre as a standard set nationally. If you have a look at the Liverpool air quality monitoring station for the last 12 months, we are already above eight microns per cubic meter; we are 8.6. So we are substantially above a threshold that we say harms human health.

We have here a concrete recycling plant that will release more of this deadly carcinogenic material into the atmosphere. And we have the New South Wales Planning Commission Assessment closing their eyes and not even looking that there has been a failure to model. This is an absolute disgrace and failure by these people. It is simply not good enough. I am glad that the Liverpool council are appealing this to the environment courts in New South Wales. These people must be held to account for their failure. They cannot sit there and have these highly paid jobs as commissioners on this bench and simply ignore the evidence, when it is a specific form of pollution that is known as a cancer-causing agent, when it is already above World Health Organization standards. This is a disgrace, and I will continue to argue and fight this case. (Time expired)