Mardi Gras Fair Day cancelled as more sites confirmed
Sydney's asbestos woes are worsening. The discovery of contaminated mulch in an inner-city park has led to the cancellation the Mardi Gras Fair Day one of the festival's most popular events.
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00:00 Fair Day is one of the Mardi Gras Festival's largest events.
00:04 Each year it attracts around 70,000 people.
00:07 And it was due to go ahead on Sunday at Victoria Park in Camperdown.
00:11 However, overnight on Monday the City of Sydney Council confirmed the presence of asbestos
00:16 in some of the mulch at the park.
00:18 Now yesterday it cordoned off the mulch and said the event would be going ahead.
00:22 But this morning it changed its mind and said it's not safe to let an event of that size
00:26 go ahead until the mulch can be removed.
00:29 Now the Inner West Council has offered to host the event instead here at Memorial Park
00:33 in Camperdown or at any other park in the local government area.
00:37 However organisers say it's probably too logistically difficult to move the event to another park
00:42 at such short notice.
00:43 "The impacts on our artists, our storeholders, our community, our suppliers, our staff, our
00:49 volunteers, there is no one that's not impacted by this.
00:52 So, but for us to pivot so fast for an event that takes 12 months to plan is really, really
00:58 difficult."
00:59 Meanwhile, a South Western Sydney primary school that was closed on Monday after the
01:02 discovery of bonded asbestos in mulch in the playground will be closed for at least another
01:07 two weeks after the government confirmed that much larger remediation is needed there than
01:12 first thought.
01:13 Now from Monday, 700 students at Liverpool West Primary School and their teachers will
01:18 be put into classrooms at Gullion Gary Primary School, which is about three and a half kilometres
01:22 down the road.
01:23 The government says it's a new school with plenty of room to accommodate the extra students.
01:27 The extra remediation work is needed because there is a lot more mulch on site at Liverpool
01:32 West Primary School than first thought.
01:34 Now they continue to stress that the risk of exposure to students is low.
01:38 However they say given children's propensity to perhaps pick up and play with mulch, they
01:42 want to take every precaution possible.
01:44 "We are moving quickly as a government to find where this is.
01:48 My advice from the EPA is that it's in no other school locations, but it is very serious
01:55 for us as a government when we find something like this in the mulch of a garden bed in
02:00 a playground at a primary school."
02:02 Asbestos has now been found in mulch at more than 20 sites in Sydney and across New South
02:06 Wales.
02:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]