Press Conference, Raymond Terrace

SUBJECTS: PFAS remediation in Australia, Williamtown Working Group

MERYL SWANSON [FEDERAL MP FOR PATERSON]: Good morning, everyone. It is really fantastic to welcome Assistant Minister for Defence Peter Khalil here this morning to join the Mayor of Port Stephens, Leah Anderson, and I on a very special day to make some really important announcements about PFAS and the Williamtown Working Group and how we are progressing this incredibly difficult, complicated but crucial issue for our community. So, again, it is just so important that we take this next step. This is really about bringing our community on this journey with us. You know, we’ve been there since the start – over 10 years ago now – when we first learned that PFAS had leached from the Williamtown defence base. It has been a very difficult journey, and I do want to acknowledge the members of our community who have suffered long and hard, who’ve been on this journey with us. But now in making the announcements we’re making today we are taking another tangible step towards some resolution for the Williamtown community and also, really importantly, taking important measures in the management of PFAS. This is an incredibly ubiquitous chemical. It is just everywhere in our modern lives. It has really shown up in our community in such a big way, and people have been, you know, dealing with it now for over 10 years. And today I feel as though we are taking a monumental step, actually, in saying we are dealing with this, where do we need to go now and, most importantly, being directed by our community. And I’m really looking forward to working with the community, with the council, with State Government and, of course, with my colleague Assistant Minister Khalil as part of an Albanese Government who really – you know, we have lent into this problem since – well, even before we were government. I’ve been elected here for now 10 years and been working with the community. But since coming to government we have taken, you know, the proactive steps to start to work on this incredibly difficult problem. So, again, welcome, Peter. Thanks for all you’re doing with us. It’s been really great to have you on this journey.

PETER KHALIL [ASSISTANT MINISTER]: Thank you. Well, thank you, Meryl, and thank you, Leah, for having me in this beautiful part of the world. Yes, we’re here because it is an important day to talk about and announce the establishment of the Williamtown Working Group. Now, this working group is bringing together local government representatives as well as local community members to help work through and navigate the issues facing the local community when it comes to PFAS. They’ll be synchronising their efforts, reporting through to the national coordinating body, which I’ve set up as well which has representatives from all the major departments and State and Territory Government departments as well. Now, the timing of this is really important. We were elected in May this year. I was sworn in as a minister in July. The first call I got was from Meryl Swanson about the PFAS issue when she realised that I was given portfolio responsibility on this very difficult issue. And she has been a real champion for her community, as she said, for almost a decade since she’s been elected here as well. And she was right on to me about the importance of taking action. I visited Raymond Terrace, I was here, I think, in September, Meryl, we met with local community members. And what we heard, what I heard very directly, was the community wanted action. And that’s what we’ve been undertaking – taking action. So setting up the national coordinating body. We’ve met with Minister Penny Sharpe in the New South Wales Government, and then opening up the nominations for the working group for Williamtown in October. 

And today we’re here obviously to announce the fact that the working group is going to commence its work – I think on Thursday is the first meeting, the 20th of November. And I’ll be meeting with members of the working group later today. There are a number of local individuals on the working group. So, I’m really looking forward to working with Graham and Lindsay, Justin and Susan and obviously with Leah and representatives of the Local Government as well as the State Government that will be on there. Kate will have representatives there as well the local community members. So it’s a really important step forward. You know, nationally with Defence and the commonwealth, particularly since we’ve been in government, have really lent in, as Meryl said, into taking actions on remediation on PFAS. It is a forever chemical. It is a problem that is global that is being faced in jurisdictions around the world. But here in Australia we’ve spent almost a billion dollars on remediation efforts across the continent, across our bases and our infrastructure, to try and contain that PFAS from spreading into local communities. We’ve supported local communities, hundreds of properties with rain water tanks and water treatment plants. We’ve actually addressed about 190,000 tonnes of soil, contaminated soil, to rectify that and billions of litres of water have been treated in those plants. 

In fact, here in Williamtown we’ve built a number of water treatment plants on the base as well, which have actually treated over almost 6 billion litres of water, and there’s more work that will be happening here in Williamtown. And I think that’s where the working group comes in. So, the future here is about how the local community members and Local Government representatives work together to help inform the national response, understanding what is happening locally, because that’s the key. The expertise is here, the people who have been facing it are here, and they can lean in, lend their expertise to have a better set of policies as we go forward. There’s plenty more work to do in remediation, and we are committed to doing that work. As I said, Defence is ahead of the curve here in many respects compared to the other jurisdictions around the world. But there’s a lot of work to do. It is a difficult, really difficult, challenge that we’re all facing, and we are fully committed to addressing it with the best technology, with the best policy responses. And I’m really looking forward to getting the reports through the national coordinating body on the work that’s being done in Williamtown. And, frankly, the last thing I’ll say, Williamtown is the template. Williamtown is the first working group. It’s a model that was recommended by the independent Senate review as the best way forward for us to address these issues. So the work that Williamtown does here in the working group is going to help inform other working groups that we’re going to be setting up in other states and territories across the country. So really looking forward to meeting with members of the community again today. And I thank Leah for having us and thank Meryl for all her remarkable work in this space over many, many years. You’ve been a real champion and advocate for your community, Meryl, and that’s what good representatives do in our democracy. So thank you for all of that. I’m going to hand over now to Leah, the mayor, if you want to say a few words. 

LEAH ANDERSON [MAYOR OF PORT STEPHENS]: Thank you. Thanks so much, Minister, and thank you so much, Meryl, as well. Look, today is a really important day. This is a whole-of-government approach to a solution, a solution to a problem that’s been around for a very long time. And as the local Mayor of Port Stephens, you know, and at Local Government you quite often hear that we’re the closest form of government to our local community. And we are. We’ve been hearing their concerns for many years now. And we know how important it is that we’re all working together on a solution. So, once again, in terms of the long-term advocacy from our local member, from Meryl, from our local minister Kate Washington and now myself as the local mayor, I’m really looking forward to being included and a part of the working group with our local community to make sure that we can deliver on the future solutions to fix this problem. As a local council we know about all of the issues around that Williamtown area, the amount of drainage issues that we’ve got as well. And unfortunately we just do not have the funding that we need to be able to get out there and build a lot of those solutions. So, again, Local Government working hand in hand with the State and Federal Government is going to deliver for our community. And I’m really looking forward to the first working group meeting on Thursday. Thank you. 

KHALIL: Thanks, Leah. Happy to take any questions. 

JOURNALIST: What, I guess, is going to be the first cab off the rank to be discussed at the meeting on Thursday? 

KHALIL: That’s a very good question. I think the agenda is being worked out now. We’ll be meeting with some of the members of the working group today as well. I’ll be meeting with them with Leah and Meryl, having a bit of a discussion about the agenda. I think one of the main things – and correct me if I’m wrong – the drainage issue that the mayor actually alluded to is a really important issue. So that will be on the agenda, I assume. But there are many other things that will be on the agenda. And part of the work here that’s going to go on with the working group is to really lean in to the detail about the issues that are facing the local community, which are different than other parts of Australia where we set up a working group in Tindal, for example, to work through the issues there. There are some commonalities, and I think that’s where we can learn from each other. So, yeah, looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say [indistinct] for next Thursday. 

JOURNALIST: How many people are in this working group, and how were they chosen? 

KHALIL: So nominations opened in October. There was a selection process to go through and people put forward an expression of interest. Members of the local community. We – being Defence – and the commonwealth determined that there should be representatives, separate representatives, from Local Government, from the State Government and also members of the Indigenous First Nations leadership, the Worimi people, that are here being on the committee – on the working group, I should say. And then there were expressions of interest, obviously, for individuals that were interested in putting their hand up given their experiences and their qualifications and backgrounds and also, you know, just being part of the community and being able to inform the working group. And then there was a selection process that was undertaken with respect to all the people that put their hand up. We had quite a lot of interest. Obviously we couldn’t have everyone on there so, as I mentioned, there was about five or six individuals that were selected based on, you know, their part in the community. So it was a very thorough selection process. 

JOURNALIST: Kind of backtracking a bit – can you detail, I guess, what some of those drainage concerns are in the area? 

KHALIL: Yeah, look, I might refer – just go over to Meryl, because she has all the detail about the drainage. I think part of the issues here in relation to the drainage is in relation to water, the water treatment and the water management in the area. That’s a real concern for properties that are around the Williamtown base. So where we can actually improve – excuse me – the movement of that water and drainage is I think what we’re talking about when we talk about drainage. As I said, there have been water treatment plants that have been established. There’s more work being done on water treatment plants, additional water treatment plants, around Williamtown that actually have treated about $5.9 billion– billion dollars – 5.9 litres, billion litres of water have been treated there. So that’s really important. But I think the drainage issue is one of the one of the concerns for the local community. Meryl, do you have anything to add on drainage? 

SWANSON: I’ll give some more detail on that. So over the past 10 years – well, to be frank with you, Williamtown has always been in a very low-lying area and drainage, there was a drainage union set up many decades ago in Williamtown. So drainage is not new. However, PFAS complicated that. And what’s happened is over the last 10 years the drains, because they’ve been contaminated with PFAS, haven’t received the regular maintenance that they would normally receive. Now, one of those drains are owned by the State Government, a couple of them are owned by council, and PFAS has made it incredibly complicated to maintain the drains. So after 10 years you have vegetation build up, you have silt build up, the drains aren’t working as they should be. So we need to really look at the whole area, and one of the first things as well as drainage is a flood study and seeing just how the water has changed its movement over the last 10 years. And we’ve got a couple of locals who have been selected for their precise expertise in this area. They are incredible. They know every valley and every drain. They know how the water runs. They know what happens when, you know, it’s a wet area and time when the tides are up. It all has an influence. So we’ve got some great local expertise, and we do know that drainage is the key. But before that there has been good work done on the base. And, look, you know, I have been – I’ve had a complicated relationship with Defence over the last 10 years because we were all pretty angry in the beginning when we learnt about this. But remembering that those chemicals were used for good intention. They were used to be able to put out fires on aircraft to save people’s lives. They weren’t maliciously used. But now we know more about them we know that, you know, we had to move away from those kinds of chemicals. And what Defence has done, to its credit, they have treated, as Peter said, billions of litres of water and soil and we have seen improvement in the movement of the plume and the amount of chemical coming off the base. And that’s really important because that impacts the community. So I do want to, you know, pay some credit to Defence. They’ve spent a lot of money, they’ve worked very hard, they’ve taken the issue incredibly seriously. But now it’s really time for the community to feel as though they’re having their equivalent say in this and being able to use their expertise. And that’s really important. So I know that they’re all champing at the bit to get on with it. And how great is it that Williamtown will be the pilot for the rest of the country? We often say that if it works in the Hunter it will work anywhere. If we can crack this solution here in Williamtown and really make some terrific gains, then we’ll be able to help many other communities across the country. And I know that’s what Peter and I are working towards as well. Obviously, I’m very focused here locally, but through the national coordination body we’re also very focused on other areas in the country on these issues like this. It’s all starting here in Williamtown, and I’m [indistinct]. 

KHALIL: I’ll just say that’s a really important [indistinct], when Meryl was talking about the fact that there’s state ownership of some of the drains and council, one of the great things about this working model, the working group model, is the fact that we’re going to have all levels of government around the same table with the local community to use – sorry, I’m a Victorian, so – to use the old AFL term, no-one’s going to be handballing this anywhere else; you can’t escape. You have to deal with the issues, work constructively together at different levels of government with the community and synchronise that effort with the national coordinating body. And that’s a really important step, I think. 

JOURNALIST: Is there a time frame for this working group to kind of get to a solution? 

KHALIL: Well, there’ll be many solutions. There are many issues that need to be [indistinct]. The working group will conduct its work. It will go through all of the issues that are facing the local community and then coordinate with the national coordinating body. So there’s not a particular time frame. Obviously there’ll be some issues that are more sensitive and need to be dealt with in a much quicker time frame. So there’ll be some urgency around those. That will be identified, or has been identified. But there’s no particular time frame. 

JOURNALIST: From what I’ve gathered, health concerns are a real big one. You know, there hasn’t, I guess, been any confirmation or any agreeance that PFAS contamination can cause severe health problems like cancers, et cetera. And lot of residents in Williamtown have – there has been a very long history of cancer impacting residents there. Is that something that’s going to be looked at? Will there be a, you know, perhaps a line further down that, yes, we agree that PFAS can cause severe health issues? 

KHALIL: Yeah, look, a lot of the medical research, medical evidence that is being sifted through frankly globally, whether it’s in Europe or in Canada or the US, is looking at these issues – the impact of PFAS on health. It’s a pretty complex set of issues obviously, and there’s a lot of work being done in that space. And so, similarly with our Health Department and our government, we’re looking at this evidence as well. You know, and it will be evidence based, and that’s a really important point. To this point in time Defence has remediated to try and contain the PFAS. That’s been the focus – to make sure it doesn’t spread, as Meryl was saying. They’ve put the investment in to make sure it doesn’t get further out into properties and so on. But that medical side of things is being looked at right across the world. I will say, there are things like the drinking water guidelines and so on, and these are issues that we’re looking at as well that are really, really important. Many of the state and territory EPAs – environmental protection agencies – are also looking at levels of PFAS in water right across the country. And they’ll be reporting back to their governments, I think – I’m not sure of the time frame, but they are doing that work currently and we’re really keen to hear that reporting come back into the national coordinating body as well. Alright? Thanks everyone.

ENDS