By Alesha Capone
The federal government will foot the bill for regular cancer screening for former Australian Defence Force firefighters based at Point Cook RAAF base between 1957 and 1986.
Six million dollars was included in last week’s federal budget, to go towards annual testing of firefighters who worked at the base’s Fire Training School.
In 2012, the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) revealed it was paying tens of thousands of dollars in compensation to firefighters who had been based at Point Cook between 1960 and 1988, after they contracted cancer.
At the time, the ABC’s 7.30 program reported that a federal government investigation had detected 120 different chemicals in the soil at the Point Cook fire school’s training ground including 12 deadly toxins, among them benzene, which is classified as carcinogenic and a known cause of leukaemia.
Many of the former firefighters being paid compensation by the DVA handled and burned chemicals at the Point Cook training school during their careers.
Federal government budget documents state the $6 million figure would cover “presumptive liability for 31 specified conditions to facilitate timely treatment” but did not specify which conditions these were.
The budget also included $11.0 million for stage four and five of the Werribee Irrigation District Modernisation and
an additional $2 billion for planning and building of an intermodal terminal, a site for freight to be transferred from trains onto trucks, in either Truganina or Beveridge in the state’s north.
The intermodal precinct will serve a future freight train line between Melbourne and Brisbane.
As well, $10 million will go toward planning for the Outer Metropolitan Ring Road, a proposed freeway and rail link for the outer northern and western suburbs of Melbourne.
