Mrs SALLY QUINNELL (Camden) (14:58): I am pleased to speak in support of the Waste Recycling and Processing Corporation (Authorised Transaction) Amendment Bill 2023. As the Minister noted, the bill will provide for changes to the function of the Waste Assets Management Corporation, hereby known as WAMC. Currently, the functions of the WAMC are limited to management and rehabilitation of nine legacy landfills across Sydney. The purpose of this bill is to ensure that the WAMC is able to manage or remediate certain contaminated land where the contamination poses risks to the environment or human health, and to provide specialist contracting and consulting services to other agencies in connection with the management of contaminated land.
Presently, there is no one agency with responsibility, capability or expertise to identify, manage and appropriately develop contaminated land, resulting in inconsistent, incomplete and inefficient contaminated land management practices. The bill capitalises on the specialisation, expertise and experience of WAMC to establish a centralised New South Wales government agency for contaminated land management, providing cost efficiencies to government. WAMC staff are technical specialists with significant experience in operation, management and rehabilitation of landfills, with specialist skills in areas such as chemical engineering, soil science, civil earthworks, machine operating and environmental monitoring.
There is no question that a large portion of land owned by the New South Wales Government is contaminated. Responsibility for the management of this land is currently spread across multiple agencies, resulting in inefficiencies such as public servants with limited or no contaminated land experience being responsible for the management of this land; agencies not prioritising identification of contaminated land within their portfolio and, as a result, sites going undetected, leaving contamination plumes to spread and local communities to be impacted; drawn-out remedial programs causing increased stress on local communities and negative media for the Government; and the completion of remedial works being dependent on obtaining funding approval from Treasury. Currently, multiple agencies are approaching Treasury separately with different funding requests, each with their own business case prepared by an external consultant. A consolidated approach to contaminated land funding will reduce those external costs for business case preparation, hasten the commencement of remedial works and simplify the assessment process for Treasury.
The legislative amendments will ensure that the New South Wales Government has a centralised and appropriately resourced and skilled agency for the ownership and management of contaminated land. Given that WAMC is recognised as expert in this field and is already undertaking this role on limited but highly complicated sites, the bill provides a clear pathway for the Government to remove duplication services across agencies and solve many outstanding environmental issues on government land. The bill will ensure that clear responsibilities for contaminated land are established and longstanding environmental liabilities are resolved in a cost-effective and timely manner by experts within the public service. I commend the Minister for being in the Chamber for the debate today. I thank him for the bill. I commend the bill to the House.
