A national wastewater drug testing program is in disarray as the Tasmanian water authority flatly denied accusations from a law enforcement agency that it has refused to contribute data.
The federal government announced plans in this year’s budget to drug-test welfare recipients using data from the nation’s sewage.
But a report released on Thursday by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commision [ACIC] contained no data from Tasmania or the Northern Territory. The commission said both had repeatedly declined to participate since October.
The commission’s chief executive, Chris Dawson, labelled the refusal “disappointing” and “regrettable”, while the Tasmanian emergency management minister, Rene Hidding, used it to attack Tasmania’s water management.
Hidding said the federal justice minister, Michael Keenan, had written to him to say “non-participation by Tasmania is disappointing”.
But TasWater, which is responsible for providing samples to the program, denied it had ever opted out.
TasWater’s head of system performance, Lance Stapleton, said the authority had been providing monthly samples to the program and could not explain why Thursday’s report contained no data for the state.
He said TasWater’s most recent sample had been provided as recently as last month, and it would continue to participate. Asked to explain the contradiction, he said it was a question for the ACIC.
The commission told Guardian Australia it stood by its statement that Tasmania did not provide samples. “This has also been confirmed by both universities running the program,” a spokeswoman said.
The national wastewater drug monitoring program is overseen by the ACIC in partnership with the University of Queensland and University of South Australia, and will run for three years with $3.6m of federal funding.
Initial sewage samples were collected in August 2016 from all states and territories, but the ACIC said Tasmania and the Northern Territory declined to send data from samples in October, December and February.
Its first report on the program, published in March, made no mention of the withdrawals, and promised data from “all state and territory capital cities” over the next three years.
“The [University of Queensland] and [University of South Australia] will monitor wastewater at approximately 50 sites across Australia for the next three years,” it said. “The capital city sites cover Canberra and all state and territory capital cities.”
The lack of data for Tasmania and the Northern Territory were only revealed in the July report, more than six months after they first allegedly declined to contribute.
A spokesman for the Northern Territory health ministry said the department was unable to comment until Monday because Friday was a public holiday in the Territory.
In a statement to Guardian Australia, the ACIC said: “Operators of the wastewater facilities in both Tasmania and the Northern Territory participated in the period covered by the first report.
“Questions on not participating in the second report are best placed with the operators of wastewater facilities in Tasmania and the Northern Territory.”
A spokeswoman for TasWater said the authority had been negotiating with the ACIC over the allocation of funding for the program, but “at no time did TasWater indicate it would not participate”.
Stapleton told the ABC TasWater had not received any of the program’s $3.6m funding, meaning it had to cover the cost of sampling itself. He said it continued to provide samples, but fewer samples than the ACIC wanted.
In a release on Thursday, Hidding used the ACIC report to accuse TasWater of “dropping the ball” in deciding to opt out, and pushed for a state takeover of water management.
In May the treasurer, Scott Morrison, announced the drug-test trial for 5,000 welfare recipients in three areas, using the wastewater data to identify areas of high drug use. People who failed the test would be given a cashless welfare card, subjected to further tests and possibly referred to treatment.
Thursday’s report showed Australians still have high rates of methamphetamine, or ice, use, with the highest rates occurring in Western Australia and South Australia. Sydney had the highest rate of cocaine use.
The next report, due to be released in November, will contain data on heroin use and MDMA.
