Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital—Radioactive leakage
705. Hon Phil Twiss to the parliamentary secretary representing the Minister for Health Infrastructure:
I refer to the memorandum tabled providing an additional response to question without notice 507, asked by Hon Nick Goiran.
Work orders included reported radioactive leak in the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital G-block sub-basement, which the memorandum advised was later found to be non-hazardous. I thank the member for the documents.
(1) What testing was done to confirm the radiation levels were non-hazardous and below notifiable incident levels?
(2) Were records of the above testing kept and reported as part of routine compliance reporting, as required under the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency guidelines?
(3) If they were not, does Sir Charles Gairdner have special licence conditions that exempt it from reporting any other incident as per the ARPNSA-GDE-1741 regulatory reporting compliance guide?
(4) If yes to (2), can the minister table the radiation test reports?
Hon Dr Katrina Stratton replied:
I thank the honourable member for some notice of the question. The following information has been provided to me by the Minister for Health Infrastructure.
(1) Radiation safety in WA is governed by the Radiation Safety Act 1975 and its regulations. As previously advised, a nuclear physicist in medicine confirmed there was no issue before remedial works were undertaken.
(2) The Department of Health advises that the event was not reportable under the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency guidelines.
(3)–(4) Not applicable.
The President: Before I give the call to Hon Anthony Spagnolo, I understand you are going to ask a question on behalf of a member who is present. Standing order 57 allows other members to ask questions on behalf of their colleague. Usually the member is not in the chamber. On this occasion there is a previous ruling that allows, if the member is unable to ask that question for health reasons, they may ask another member to do so. In light of that, I give the call to Hon Anthony Spagnolo.
