Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I agree very strongly with the call for action at the end of this motion. It's why I fought so hard for one of my election commitments, which involves catching rubbish in the Brisbane River before it moves out to Moreton Bay and the open ocean. I also want to say, with a great deal of respect to all honourable members speaking on this topic, whose passion should be commended and that matches my own passion, that this motion could be further developed in its approach and its language not just around the sentiments but when it comes to considering the options at play and the practical solutions in front of us. So I want to use my time today to very constructively put on the record some considerations that might help to advance this parliamentary debate from where the policy's been in recent years to where it is now, having regard to the science and the evidence and some of my knowledge from the industry I used to work in before coming to this place.

Plastic bags are detrimental to the environment. Logically, the next question has to be: if we propose to ban them, what are the substitutes that people will turn to, and are they more, or less, detrimental? Paper bags, for instance, can use far more water and electricity, depending on their make, and therefore can have a worse carbon footprint. And those synthetic bags that a lot of retailers sell now are probably the heaviest and most resource-intensive of all the options. If we use them enough times, ultimately they become a better option for the environment. But the evidence suggests that at this stage people aren't presently using them nearly enough times, on average, to make them the best choice. Heavier-grade plastics, on the other hand, do use more plastic than lightweight single-use plastic bags, so they can take as long or longer to degrade. Yet the facts suggest that because they're heavier they don't travel as easily through the air or through the water, so they're much less likely to enter the waterways and the open ocean. That's why schemes such as those introduced in South Australia and the ACT particularly focus their efforts on phasing out lightweight, single-use plastic bags, allowing retailers and customers to substitute other plastic bags, like heavier-grade plastics or indeed biodegradable or compostable plastics.

And that's an issue I want to mention in passing. I've said consistently in other debates in this place, from burqa bans to night-life lockouts, that calls for blanket bans can sometimes be a clunky, poor choice for policymakers—always motivated by good intentions but too often giving rise to unintended consequences. Sometimes better and more sophisticated or nuanced policy responses are available. In this case, I want to inform honourable members that I'm onboard with this concept of phasing out, specifically, lightweight plastic bags, so long as we also help consumers, especially poor consumers, who might end up paying a bit more, and industry, especially small businesses, to transition and gain the best awareness they can as to substitutes, which we can show are better overall.

One further note on that in passing: honourable members need to know that South Australia was the pioneer in this place. Some of the definitions around biodegradability and compostability have moved on since then, and all of us in this place maybe should be suggesting that South Australia and other states really look at that fund that this government put aside recently, in the last budget, to assist all the states to upgrade their laws and achieve harmony between the different laws to make sure that we don't end up with that impact of different laws and red tape across different states.

And I want to point out that some of the numbers in this motion I think might not be quite right. One bag per person per day—in other words, about 20 million bags a day—was certainly what some studies showed about 10 years ago. More recent studies showed that it's probably about halved since then, and mostly that's due to education and awareness around the community, as well as some of the bans that have already been instituted in some of the minor jurisdictions.

In conclusion, I want to express very fine sentiments with respect to this motion. If honourable members come to me, for instance, with a firm proposal to put some resources behind the research and evidence gathering done on plastic bags and, in particular, their substitutes—which is very possible with the agencies out there—which helps the industry, potentially, and small business in particular to transition. In that way we won't inadvertently undermine the competitive neutrality between different retailers or between big and small businesses and their ability to transition. It also helps the states to achieve uniform, consistent laws across the country, which then would very likely attract cross-party support, including from me, because it would have the makings of a genuine, workable way forward.

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