Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to support the Product Stewardship Bill 2011. This bill in its most practical terms is about giving Australia and Australians a way forward for the recycling of television and computer waste, an area in which the waste stream is growing. It is about protecting both the health and the environment for future generations of Australians.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10:19 to 10:34

This bill has its origins, in many ways, in what happened in the 1950s in the town of Minamata on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. The situation was that the Chisso Corporation, set up in the 1930s, had been producing material and chemicals which were used in the production of plastics. One of the by-products was mercury. That mercury was allowed to leak into and be dumped into Minamata Bay. Over time, that mercury found its way into the food chain. In particular, it found its way into the shellfish, the crustaceans and the general fish community. It was ingested. The early 1950s saw what was sometimes known as the drunken cat syndrome, where small animals began to suffer and lost their motor coordination. Progressively this fed into the situation faced by the people of Minamata. It was an early warning sign in the postwar period of the danger, the impact, the hazard of heavy metal poisoning on the human population.

The Minamata story was slow to occur and it was slow to be recognised. But what occurred in Minamata and what occurred through the negligence of the Chisso Corporation was a message that progressively made its way around the world—the message being that we have responsibility for the stewardship of our products and we have responsibility for the by-products and consequences which flow from our products. Against that background of the Minamata disease, as it was known, and the profound impact it had on the people and the life of the fishing community of Minamata, we now come to the situation where product stewardship is a legitimate, important national responsibility for Australia in the 21st century.

Let me make this point about bipartisanship in environmental affairs. There are points of disagreement but there are also significant areas of agreement. Currently, the opposition and the government are engaged in three major areas of cooperative activity. Firstly, there is this product stewardship legislation. Secondly, we have recently provided support for the government's revised vehicle emissions standards. That is an important direct action measure which the government has taken and to which we have given our support. Thirdly, we have also accepted—although we have some concerns about the way in which it was done—the changes to the fringe benefits tax to prevent the ludicrous situation of people driving enormous distances immediately prior to the cut-off date for the annual calculation of kilometres, thereby increasing emissions, fuel usage and waste in our society. These changes will end the windfall gain to be received by driving further, although we do have some concerns about the impact on legitimate, proper activities of tradespeople and people involved in travelling sales.

Having said that, these three examples of product stewardship, emission standards and fringe benefits tax reform are all examples of cooperative action. Where we disagree, it is not disagreement for the sake of it but disagreement on the basis of an alternative principle—a concern either about the structure or the implementation. In the same way that, right from the outset, we identified the home insulation program as a potential, an emerging and finally an actual disaster—on each occasion eliciting a denial by the government that such a problem either would be faced or was actually being faced—we now place our concerns on the record about using a massive electricity, petrol, gas and grocery tax as the means to reduce Australian emissions.

Against that preliminary discussion, I will deal with this bill in four brief stages—firstly, the nature of the bill; secondly, the background; thirdly, the principle; and, finally, the detail. The Product Stewardship Bill 2011 establishes a national framework to support voluntary, co-regulatory and regulatory product stewardship and extended producer responsibility schemes to provide for the impacts of a product being responsibly managed during and at the end of its life. This bill is about providing a structure for whole-of-life management of consumer products and the components contained within them. Very simply, it is about making sure that in the 21st century there are no more Minamatas and that we do not face the Rachel Carson Silent Spring examples which she so courageously raised. She was one of the harbingers of the modern concern for environmental management, and she paid a difficult price at the time. She opened up consciousness about taking responsibility for that which we produce and therefore for the consequences of those products.

Having established the bill's purpose, I turn to the background to the bill itself. The commitment to establish the framework goes back a long way, through the Council of Australian Governments and in particular the Environment Protection and Heritage Council. There was discussion of the principle in November 2009 but I know discussions go back to previous years. I was involved myself in a discussion in Christchurch some years ago, on behalf of the Australian government, with the New Zealand government and the Australian states. There is a long heritage of bipartisan support for the concept and the direction, and I am pleased that we have been able to work with the government to achieve appropriate changes and amendments which will allow for a joint approach.

That brings me to the specific principle of the bill. The coalition fully supports the principle of product stewardship. This is the notion of shared responsibility for reducing the environmental health and safety footprint of manufactured goods and materials across the lifecycle of a product. That is drawn directly from the National Waste Policy. We support that concept; it is about doing things in a correct and appropriate fashion that will not inadvertently drive up the cost of living for Australians but will deal with the problem directly, head-on and in a way which can solve the problem at source. In particular, the coalition also supports the notion of voluntary schemes. Voluntary product stewardship schemes as set out in part 2 of the bill which sit alongside co-regulatory and mandatory product stewardship schemes offer a very prospective way forward.

I now turn to the detail of the bill. I praise the work of coalition members Senator Simon Birmingham and Senator Mary Jo Fisher, both of whom have worked with the government. In particular, the coalition worked with Senator Don Farrell on a series of amendments. The result of those amendments is that there are now three very specific criteria for developing and recognising schemes for accreditation under this bill. The first element is that the system be focused very much on containing hazardous waste substances, the second element is that there be a clear test on the potential to significantly increase the conservation of materials used in the products or increase the recovery of resources from waste from the products, and the third element is that there be the potential to significantly reduce the impact that the products or substances in the products have on the environment or on the health or safety of human beings. The origins of the last element can be traced back not just to Minamata but to some of the tragedies we saw through industrialisation in the 19th century.

Having worked on these amendments, we are pleased to adopt a bipartisan position and to support this bill. On behalf of the opposition, I am delighted to commend the Product Stewardship Bill 2011 to the House and to the Australian public.

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