John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

A terrible interjection from Senator Cameron over there, Mr Acting Deputy President—you should pull him into line! Anyway, Steven Munchenberg was very good, as always. I get on very well with Steven and the Australian Bankers Association. I called representatives of the big four banks to say, 'Look, there's a problem here. People's properties are being devalued through absolutely no fault of their own.' This foam was being used for many years to put out so-called fuel fires. It is a pollutant and it has spread. Has it gone into the water system? Has it gone into the ground? I do not know. There has to be a lot of research to find the facts out here. But the point I make is that it was no fault whatsoever of the residents there. Their properties have been devalued and perhaps are not even saleable, with the media et cetera going around. In my opinion, we have to have a good, close look at this. As I just said to Senator Nash, imagine if some government department or someone else came along to the edge of my little farm—my wife, Nancy, and I have a little property out at Inverell—and polluted the creek and our property or poisoned the soil or whatever. We would want to know why. It would certainly devalue our little farm. If we were totally not responsible for the damage, the pollution and the devaluation, I would certainly be asking questions, just like the residents of Williamtown. I am not familiar with the situation at Oakey; I only talk from experience and what has been brought to my attention. They have serious concerns.

I do thank the Australian Bankers Association and the representatives I have spoken to from the four big banks to say, 'Look, we're not going to be doing any panicking. We're going to work with these people.' It may be a different situation if you are in one of these houses, you have your house mortgaged to a business, your business is going bad, your cash flow is going bad and you cannot maintain your payments. Then you will have to talk to your bank and try to work it through. But the point I make is that, if these properties have been devalued through absolutely no fault of the owners of the properties, we have a problem to work through. And I do appreciate the Australian Bankers Association and the banks for being considerate and listening to my calls. I do not think there are going to be any problems for the residents as far as their mortgages go, so long as it is about the valuation and not, as I said, if they are running a business and their business is in trouble or for some other reason their cash flow has been dramatically reduced.

It is a very testing time for these people at Williamtown. This PFAS—that I had never heard of before I found out about it this week—is a serious chemical. There is talk about its listing on the Stockholm listing of chemicals. I think it is a case of banning these chemicals. The case I want to put is: what can the government do? The first thing we are doing is supporting these people, with some money going in from Defence to help Hunter Water put water into these houses that are not on town water so that they can be supplied with clean water. That is a good plus in itself. Certainly, we are helping them in the health department with the situation of blood tests and so on. There is also some mental health support, which is most important. Imagine if you lived there, Mr Acting Deputy President O'Sullivan, and you found yourself under financial pressure. You had bought a property and house that might have been worth $500,000. All of a sudden, you think it is worth $300,000—or even less. You owed $200,000 or $300,000 on your property and you thought you were getting ahead. You had half your house paid for—its value—and, all of a sudden, you were back to owing the whole value of the property. It is not a good thing to have on your mind. Mental health issues may be a serious problem there as well. I certainly hope that the Department of Health are doing all they can to assist these people through these tough times.

As far as I am concerned—and, Senator Burston, you would know more about this than me—we need to go right through this testing to see where the pollution is. The first thing to do is to stop any further pollution. No doubt these chemicals are no longer being used by the Defence department. We need to see that the pollution does stop—that this PFAS is not being used. Then we need to do the testing of the soils and the water to see how far the pollution has spread. We need to see if it is from the source of the Defence department and prevent the spreading. Then we need to see what we can do to clean up the mess.

As far as I am concerned, if it is the cause of the Defence department and the property values are seriously devalued, then I think the Defence department should compensate those people for the devaluations. As I said, they may be just living in their house—they have bought a property; they may have bought a block of land there, Senator Burston, and built their house—and thinking that everything is hunky-dory and fine. Then, through no fault of their own, just because of where they bought—near the Air Force base at Williamtown and at Salt Ash—they have suffered an enormous financial blow because of someone else or some department. I should not say 'someone else'; many people would have made these decisions, and they would have been advised, no doubt, years ago that these PFAS foams for fighting the fuel fires were safe, effective and the new modern way to put these fires out, especially in the case of emergency. If you had an airline crash, or whatever, and fuel had spilt everywhere, you would need something very effective to put that fire out. It could be a case of saving lives at the time. It would have been a great invention at the time. But many chemicals were great inventions—arsenic for drenching ship and dipping sheep for lice. Everything was a great invention years ago on the farm until they were banned and until people realised the carcinogenic effect of such dangerous chemicals. This may be a case of the same situation with this PFAS, where they have designed something—invented a chemical that is very effective for fuel fires—only to find later in life that, 'Hang on; this is not a pure chemical. It's actually a pollutant; it's dangerous. It can cause enormous damage to the environment and to people.' Who knows! I am not a doctor; I am not a specialist in this field.

I do sympathise with those people for what they are going through. I have done my best and I am very confident that the financial institutions will stick with them through this period of research, which I think must be carried out, to research the level of pollution, of contamination, so to see what can be done to clean it up, and how it can be cleaned up. If it cannot be cleaned up and if the people have to be moved out of there—I do not know the final situation; I have not visited there. But I hope that in the near future I can go down to Salt Ash to talk to the locals and see what we can do for them.

I thank the journalist for bringing it to my attention. I am sure that she appreciates very much the work I have done to contact the banks and institutions to see that those people are not under severe financial pressure and more stress. Only time will tell, but I know that the department is certainly working on it. I have discussed it with Minister Payne. She is very aware of the situation. When I phoned Minister Payne she was in America at the time. Thankfully, she rang me as soon as she could. She rang me straight back after I texted her to give me a call to assess the situation. She is certainly onto it, and so is the Department of Defence. I repeat that—