After 40 years asbestos continues to take its deadly poll

IN February this year, 61-year-old Phillip Batson, working part time
for the NSW Council for the Ageing and in good health, said he
was keen to `work until I drop'.

Barely a month later, Batson felt a pain in his back.

A few weeks after that, he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a horrific
and incurable asbestos-related disease that restricts breathing
as cancer gradually envelops the lungs.

Since then `everything has stopped', Mr Batson said. `I can't do anything
at all, and it hurts.'

Mr Batson is just one example of how asbestos disease victims continue
to emerge while the money to meet their claims is gradually
running out -- and the NSW inquiry into James Hardie's asbestos liabilities
drags on.

He has launched a claim against the company he worked for at the time
-- James Hardie and Coy.

Mr Batson started with them in Sydney as a cadet chemist in 1963.

Among other jobs, he tested the tensile strength of James Hardie asbestos-cement
sheeting, with a machine that pressed sample sheets
until they cracked. He wore no face protection.

That company is no longer owned by James Hardie; its name was changed
to Amaca, and it was folded into the trust fund that Hardie set
up to cover its future anticipated asbestos liabilities, the Medical
Research and Compensation Foundation.

As far as James Hardie is concerned, Mr Batson's claim is irrelevant,
because it says it no longer has any Australian liabilities after
restructuring the group in 2001.

The NSW commission is investigating whether James Hardie, before it
moved its corporate office to The Netherlands, deliberately underfunded
the MRCF with just $293 million.

The MRCF has about $200 million left, which is expected to last a
few years, but current estimates put its expected future liabilities
at between $1billion and $2billion.

`It would be just my luck if, when I won my case, oops, there'd be
no money left,' Mr Batson said at his Sydney home yesterday, even
though his claims could be covered by insurance.

The commission was originally scheduled to report last month, but
now will not report until September.

It has heard allegations that company officers and its lawyers may
have broken a range of corporate laws.

Mr Batson said that ever since he worked for Hardie, he knew there
was always a risk of contracting an asbestos disease, which can
take up to 50 years to develop.

`I was sort of, in a way, waiting for something to happen one of these
days, and it did.'

He is bitter that, despite mounting evidence of the dangers of asbestos
disease, Hardie continued to produce the product until 1987.

`The place was a bloody time-bomb. They knew the place was crook,'
he said.

He is also angry about current allegations that the company concocted
an elaborate scheme to quarantine its asbestos liabilities.

A recent newspaper photo of the multi-million-dollar Californian mansion
owned by James Hardie chief executive Peter Macdonald, who
declined to comment while the inquiry continued, enraged him.

`I am very dirty with them because of their various high jinks,' he
said. `You can't put them in a room filled with asbestos, but they
have to be made accountable.'

Mr Batson's doctors have given him about 13 months to live, and he
feels particularly pained about the implications for his 11-year-old
son, Alexander.

`I have a little boy who I desperately love, and in a year or so,
I won't see him any more,' Mr Batson said.

Copyright 2004 / The Australian