Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency (the agency) revealed in recent reports that more than 64 building sites across Australia contain illegal asbestos;

(b) it is unclear how many building sites have asbestos that has not been detected; and

(c) the agency advised the Senate Economics References Committee, for its inquiry into non conforming building products, that building products containing asbestos are being imported to Australia, contrary to Australian law;

(2) acknowledges that:

(a) Australia has one of the highest rates of asbestos related death and injury in the world; we know that 33,000 people have already lost their lives to asbestos; and

(b) around 700 Australians die each year from asbestos related diseases, and without proper management experts worry that tens of thousands of Australians could be diagnosed with asbestos related diseases in coming decades;

(3) condemns the Government's inaction and silence on the dangers of asbestos, despite warnings provided to the Senate Economics References Committee; and

(4) calls on the Government to give greater importance to stopping asbestos importers at the border and immediately increase the penalties for illegal asbestos contamination on Australian building sites.

The motion speaks very clearly for itself. It is basically calling on this government to do more to stop asbestos importers. Asbestos in this country has been banned. The importation of asbestos has been banned. Yet we are now seeing in our papers, in our local media and in reports from the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency more and more reports that there is cheap Chinese imported asbestos in building products finding their way onto Australian building sites.

It is a pretty straightforward motion. It calls on the government to give greater importance to stopping asbestos importers and to immediately increase penalties for illegal asbestos contamination on Australian building sites, and it calls for greater resourcing. Yet nobody on the government side is speaking to this issue. Perhaps they do not care what is going on in Australian building workplaces. Perhaps they want to deny the fact that this issue is occurring. But these are the facts as they have been reported by the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency. It was reported as recently as February this year, after an audit they did, that more than 50 building sites across the nation are suspected of having illegal asbestos contamination from China. This is not a union scare campaign; this is what the agency is saying. The agency's CEO has said that he is aware of 64 sites where asbestos-tainted concrete fibre sheeting is being used in construction. This is a case where in Australian workplaces and on Australian construction sites the contractors are going for cheap, imported products. State workplace safety authorities are monitoring 17 sites in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria. It is an issue that is not specific to one state but across all states.

The problem is that the product coming in has been certified as asbestos-free but is not. This demonstrates that there is a lack of resources within Customs—now Australian Border Force—to properly policy this product coming in. The government has failed to resource properly in this space. This deadly substance is being shipped into this country illegally from places like China and it has been certified asbestos-free. It is a popular building product, and it is up to the government to stop this product coming in. Further, it is up to the government to make sure there are tough penalties in place for companies who import and use this product illegally.

As one advocate said, he is worried that this new wave of asbestos is going to create a new generation of victims, warning that Australia could end up as the waste dump for dodgy product from around the world. He acknowledges that Customs does not have enough resources or manpower to inspect everything coming in. Therefore, it lies with this government to do more. This government needs to do more to stop illegal dumping of dodgy product here in this country. We want to see a government that is proactive about antidumping—that is, by ensuring that any product coming from overseas is safe and can be used in Australian construction sites for building purposes. It is not just about today's construction workers and the fact that they have been exposed to asbestos and dodgy product. It is also about the tenants and future owners of these buildings and constructions, and what it could mean for them in the future.

Asbestos, sadly, is still an ongoing problem in this country. Yet, from this government we have continued silence. I stand here today to condemn the government's inaction and silence on dangerous asbestos despite the warnings that have been provided not just by the agency but by the Senate committee. I call upon the government to give greater importance to stopping asbestos importers in this country.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member. Is there a seconder for the motion? I call the member for Werriwa.

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is timely that the member for Bendigo brings this forward. We are hours from a Four Corners expose of the studied disregard by Rio Tinto of the lives, the health, the environment, the living standards of Brazilian villagers affected by one of their mining enterprises. Quite frankly, this industry has been characterised by a ruthless pursuit of profit at the total disregard for the workers. In 1929, of course, as Lang Hancock started to utilise the Wittenoom deposits, he famously said of the people who died that, 'You have to break a few eggs to make omelettes.' That is a kind of attitude that has characterised employers in this field. It is in an industry where, at one site in 1989, 500 people were assessed as dying from asbestosis. It was thought to have reached 2,000. It was the same industry where, in 2012, the High Court in this country found seven directors of James Hardie group had breached their duties by approving misleading statements released to the stock exchange. They were essentially about compensation.

On the national front, it is worth noting that different medical models point to peak deaths from mesothelioma between 2014 and 2021. It is happening now. The number of mesothelioma cases in the country is expected to reach 18,000, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. I join with the member for Bendigo in expressing concern that this national health crisis was precipitated by employers who knew the whole time that they were killing workers, they were destroying them and their families' livelihoods and they were making sure that people would disappear from those families. It is, indeed, appalling that the government cannot even produce a few speakers to defend their total inaction in allowing the continued importation of this product into Australia. It is all right to talk about free trade agreements and how they are facilitating Chinese enterprise. However, to actually allow a number of producers to bring this product in at the grave danger not only to the workers but to consumers, innocent bystanders and neighbours is appalling. One must question the degree of disinterest by government members in such a serious problem.

It is timely, also, on the local front. I live in the Parramatta municipality. Within a kilometre of my home we recently had a situation where a white tip truck dumped a load on Boundary Road, Chester Hill, sometime between 2 am and 3 am last Thursday. One must say that, at two to three o'clock in the morning, this was deliberate, this was an attempt to avoid vigilance by the general public. It left a trail of building waste containing asbestos material approximately 50 metres long and three metres wide along Boundary Road. I join with the mayor of Parramatta in saying:

I want to be able to parade this person in court. I think the industry just has cowboys and they've got to be controlled.

When this person is found, I certainly hope that he is on the front page of the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald, and gets a lot of TV notoriety.

Further to this matter, the Senior Manager, Waste Compliance at the New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority, Christopher McElwain, said: 'Big companies should be careful in selecting contractors to dispose of hazardous waste. They should only pay the contractors when the waste has been shown to be legally owned.'

It is not just the Parramatta municipality that has been characterised by heavy dumping in previous decades because of the close proximity, at Camellia, of the Wunderlich and James Hardie plants. We know that over many decades they hid this product throughout the municipality of Parramatta—and I put on record at this stage Matt Peacock's groundbreaking 2009 publication Killer company: James Hardie exposed, which partly went into those matters—but it is not only in Parramatta. In Liverpool, suspended Liberal Party councillor Peter Ristevski quite correctly is launching a campaign against the Liberal mayor, Nick Mannoun, and the chief executive officer, Carl Wulff, for their negligence in this matter. The Asbestos Diseases Foundation noted of Mr Mannoun and Liverpool council that they were 'in denial' and said, 'Council is treating this'—that is, the way in which they have allowed dumping, from municipal dumps into the wider society at other sites—'in a laissez-faire manner … they don't see it as a hazard.' The rest of society, I am afraid, understands that it is a hazard.

It is deplorable that near a Serbian social club and at other sites throughout the municipality council employees have been asked to dump these materials. The council, in turn, has not been forward in making sure, on behalf of these people, that a health test is undertaken. The resolution is necessary, it is overdue, and this is a serious national problem. (Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we have a very important motion on asbestos, an incredibly dangerous and toxic material that has left thousands of people mortally injured and killed thousands—700 Australians are affected every year by asbestos and mesothelioma—and there is not one government member speaking on this motion. It is simply incredible that, with this massive threat, there is not a single government member to speak on this motion. The member for Bendigo should be congratulated for bringing it to the parliament, but you would think that this government could put up at least one speaker on this important subject.

Every year in my electorate of Wakefield the Asbestos Victims Association of South Australia holds a memorial service. It is a touching service. We nearly always have bipartisan representation there, which is why today's no-show by the government is so depressing. We have seen in South Australia the incredible and terrible legacy of asbestos, and I pay tribute to Terry Miller OAM, who runs the Asbestos Victims Association and was on 7.30 on 14 February this year telling his story and reminding everybody about the dangers of this terrible product.

It is amazingly negligent of this government that we have example after example of asbestos being brought into this country. ABC News of 15 February 2016 had the headline 'Dozens of Australian building sites contaminated by illegal Chinese asbestos imports, authorities say'. The story talked about 17 sites in New South Wales, 13 in Queensland, eight in Victoria and 11 in South Australia, including two electrical substations in my state of South Australia. It will be members of the union that I am a member of, the CEPU, who will have to deal with that. Peter Tighe from the Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency has talked about the perils of young tradespeople, who are led to believe that all of the material they are working with is asbestos-free, finding out that they have been exposed to this terrible, dangerous and deadly product.

Another headline, from 11 September 2015, is: 'Asbestos found in imported children's crayons marked with Dora the Explorer and Peppa Pig'. Bizarrely, this article on the News website says:

The ACCC does not believe that traces of asbestos in crayons presents a safety risk to consumers because the asbestos is fixed within the crayon wax, which removes the risk of inhalation or ingestion.

That is incredible—in children's crayons; in cement products; in the brakes of thousands of Toyota motor vehicles. We have the situation where counterfeit brake parts laced with asbestos have been fitted to a fleet of potentially 400,000 HiLuxes and 100,000 HiAce delivery vans. And what do we get from this government? First of all, we get no speakers in this debate. It is a bit hard to have a debate when the government does not show up. It is an incredible and absolutely shameful display. But when the opposition is out there calling for Border Force—this newly named organisation, which was roaming around the streets of Melbourne checking people's driver's licences last year—it is allowing these imports of asbestos into the country.

We need a tougher approach on this matter. We need a serious government with a serious attitude towards this deadly product. The government has got to do better than not showing up and not dealing with it. Thousands of tradespeople rely on Border Force and rely on this government to adequately monitor the products that are coming in. It does not matter whether it is asbestos laced cement or aluminium cladding, which is a fire risk, or electrical cord, which is dangerous, Border Force and this government have got to start showing up and doing something about what is a serious problem.

Debate adjourned.