Health Minister slams Defence response to Oakey contamination

HEALTH Minister Cameron Dick has slammed the Defence Department for suggesting state health authorities should pay for Oakey residents to have blood tests.

HEALTH Minister Cameron Dick has slammed the Defence Department for suggesting state health authorities should pay for Oakey residents to have blood tests, saying it was the department’s “mess to clean up”.

Defence this week refused to facilitate further tests for distressed residents, despite the department’s direct involvement in the leaching of hazardous chemicals into more than half the town.

Health Minister Cameron Dick.

Mr Dick told The Courier-Mail the time had come for Defence Minister Marise Payne to take responsibility.

OAKEY: Calls for children to be tested

“The department of Defence made this mess and it is Defence’s responsibility to clean it up,” he said.

“I do not believe the funding provided to Queensland Health for the delivery of health services in our state should be used to clean up Canberra’s mess”.

Mr Dick said Defence was allocated $32.3 billion in this month’s Federal Budget. Ms Payne refused to comment on blood tests but told The Courier-Mail her department was conducting human health and ecological risk assessments at Oakey.

“Defence is collecting samples of groundwater, surface water, soil, sediment and biota in and around the Army Aviation Centre Oakey as part of the environmental investigation,” she said.

Results of the human health risk assessment are due in the third quarter of this year.