International Worker No 239, Saturday, September 13, 1997 SEP leads campaign on leukaemia deaths Workers inquiry held in Australian steel town On the weekend of July 19-20 an extraordinary public hearing took place in the city of Wollongong, the centre of Australia's steel industry, 60 miles south of Sydney. It was called to investigate the high rates of leukaemia and other forms of cancer in the neighbourhoods surrounding the huge Port Kembla steelworks operated by BHP (Broken Hill Proprietary), Australia's largest corporation. Convened after a 10-month campaign by the Socialist Equality Party of Australia, the workers inquiry took testimony from cancer victims and their relatives, from steel workers and other residents of the area around the plant, and from scientists, doctors and others with professional knowledge. The SEP launched the campaign for a workers inquiry last October, after one of the leukaemia victims, Melissa Cristiano, began investigating the incidence of leukaemia in the area and the possible links to BHP. Melissa Cristiano died in February. Her husband Nick testified before the workers inquiry, and her father, Will Juarez, served as one of the commissioners who heard the evidence presented. The SEP campaign won a powerful response among working people, under conditions where the impact of BHP's industrial pollution, including hazardous emissions and the dumping of toxic wastes, were covered up by the Australian federal government, the state government of New South Wales, headed by Labour Party Premier Bob Carr, and the trade union bureaucracy. In this issue we reprint the resolution adopted by the more than 200 people who attended the workers inquiry, and other material related to it. The commissioners "This inquiry is part and parcel of a wider struggle" Statement by Will Juarez Students shocked by extent of cancer crisis

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