A plan to increase the network of safe landfill sites where Victorians can dispose of dangerous asbestos has collapsed, with the state government rejecting a push for more funding for the program following delays and cost blowouts.
Three years into the 10-year project to provide more convenient disposal points, Sustainability Victoria – the authority charged with managing the program – has set up just three pilot sites, well short of the eight sites it planned to roll out in the first 16 months of the scheme.
Asbestos remains in the Victorian community despite the product being banned since 2003.
Last year, the state government rejected a funding bid from Sustainability Victoria and the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action to keep working on the sites beyond March 2024, which fuelled concerns that reduced access to safe and legal sites would deter people from disposing of asbestos properly.
Auditor-General Andrews Greaves sounded the alarm in a report that assessed Victoria’s measures to reduce illegal dumping, which found the government had no way of measuring the scale of the problem or how much asbestos was still in the state’s buildings and structures.
Victorian Auditor-General Andrew Greaves.
There are currently just 18 landfill sites that can receive domestic or commercial asbestos waste from the public, but research by Sustainability Victoria forecasts that number will decrease by 2030. The research also raised concerns about the distance people needed to travel to access safe disposal sites, as it is estimated that by 2030, millions of Victorians will live beyond a one-hour drive from safe landfill sites.
The auditor-general concluded that these barriers ran the risk of deterring people from disposing of asbestos properly.
Steve Marett, the managing director of Grounds Maintenance Australia, which specialises in removing residential and commercial asbestos, said there was a severe lack of safe disposal sites across the state, and described Victoria as the “wild west” when compared to NSW.
Marett told The Age that most people who discovered asbestos wanted to dispose of it safely, but the lack of disposal locations and inconsistent pricing and rules resulted in operators illegally dumping asbestos products on back roads.
“While 90 per cent of people want to do the right thing, it’s not an easy thing to get rid of, it can be hard to get to the tip at the end of the day when there are so few options out there,” he said.
“We get called to pick up on roadsides and on back roads, sometimes it’s even sealed and labelled, which makes you think it’s a commercial operator, and they just couldn’t get to a disposal site.
“In NSW, it is more uniform and stringent at transfer stations. If they [the Victorian government] had a look at that, they’d replicate that pretty quickly.”
The auditor-general’s report – released late last year – was also critical of the government’s broader approach to reducing illegal asbestos dumping, and concluded that the department and government agencies and authorities including the Environment Protection Authority, Parks Victoria, Sustainability Victoria and WorkSafe Victoria “do not have a consistent approach to collecting and sharing data about asbestos dumping”.
The report found there were still many asbestos products in communities despite a complete ban on the product in Australia since December 2003. Despite this, Greaves said there was “no evidence” of the state government using a national “heatmap”, which uses predictive modelling to help locate asbestos that he said could improve Victoria’s understanding of illegal dumping trends.
“Agencies do not know how much, where, or how densely distributed asbestos is across the state. Integrating this information with data about past patterns of disposal would help the government to forecast how much asbestos will need to be disposed of in the future,” Greaves said.
“This would empower the government to develop strategies to reduce dumping, such as improved access to disposal facilities.”
In response to the report, Sustainability Victoria said it would investigate options to continue the disposal plan despite its bid for further funding being rejected.
The government was contacted to respond to the decision to axe the funding.
Marett, whose business specialises in asbestos remediation, said providing additional information on the location of asbestos and where it was being dumped would be “invaluable” to Victorians.
Opposition environment spokesman James Newbury said the government’s decision to axe the program was proof the state was broke.
“Asbestos is a significant health risk and by Labor failing to safely dispose of the waste, local communities are being put in serious danger,” Newbury said.
“It is unacceptable for the government to be putting the health and safety of the community at risk simply because they have run out of money.”
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