One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts has blasted progress on efforts to clean-up PFAS contamination.
Senator Roberts told the Senate on Thursday that there were now 900 contaminated sites across Australia.
"Plumes at Oakey, Richmond, Williamtown, Katherine and Townsville are spreading across formerly productive farmland," he said.
"Residents are having their homes destroyed, and poor medical outcomes for long-term residents are a fact we must own up to, yet the government's response has been more spin than substance."
Senator Roberts questioned why a recommendation to appoint a coordinator-general to control the government's PFAS response had been replaced by a PFAS taskforce, which is responsible for coordinating a whole-of-government response.
The Newcastle Heraldreported in June that Senator Roberts had requested access to the minutes of the taskforces' three most recent meetings.
"I wanted to see what this sincere effort to create a whole-of-government response looked like. I was promised those minutes, yet they never arrived," Senator Roberts said on Thursday.
"I did a document discovery, and the minutes never arrived. So let me repeat my request: where are the minutes?"
The Herald reported this week the concerns of Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi regarding progress on property buy-backs.
The government's PFAS sub-committee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, recommended that the government prioritise assisting property owners and businesses in affected areas through compensation for financial losses, including the possibility of buying back contaminated properties.
Senator Faruqi said the nation-wide damage caused by PFAS chemicals had been extensive and people had suffered for too long.
"The government has not done enough to adequately deal with PFAS contamination. Financial compensation must be provided for residents and property owners, including buy-backs," she said.
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