Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia boasts some of the most beautiful sights and sounds in the world. We have beautiful rivers, creeks, national parks, landmarks and oceans. We have an abundance of wildlife and sea life of all shapes and sizes. We have fauna and flora not seen anywhere else in the world, and this country is home to just 24.6 million people and their families. This is why we must exercise environmental stewardship so that we can stop waste from destroying our creeks, oceans and rivers; harming our wildlife and sea life; hurting our flora and fauna; clogging drains; and littering campgrounds and our national parks. All of this greatly affects the health of Australians, creates major economic losses, hinders economic growth and has devastating environmental impacts.

I'm calling on all Australians to take action on waste by taking personal responsibility and standing up and saying, 'Our waste, our responsibility.' Waste is an issue for all of us. We all create it, we all dump it, and that means we are all responsible for what happens to it. This is why I'm placing a high priority on creating new employment pathways through re-used recycling and remanufacturing initiatives in Longman. Data indicates that resource recovery and recycling employs more than three times as many people per tonne of waste compared with landfilling. This data also shows that recycling and resource recovery provides 9.2 full-time jobs for every 10,000 tonnes of waste recycled, compared with 2.8 jobs when sending the same waste to landfill.

We have organisations in my electorate of Longman that are already doing amazing work in this area, by encouraging the responsible use and protection of our precious natural environment through fantastic conservation and sustainable practice. For that, I thank them, and I take this opportunity to invite any business, social enterprise or not-for-profit that have as their core purpose reducing waste and creating jobs to come to Longman. The Morrison government is strongly committed to reducing waste, increasing recycling rates and building capacity within our domestic recycling industry. Australians currently generate 67 million tonnes of waste per year, 2.7 tonnes per person, of which only around 58 per cent is recovered.

Our government is taking practical action to better manage our waste here in Australia and ensure that our valuable resources are recycled and re-used over and over again. The Morrison government has committed $167 million to a comprehensive Australian recycling investment plan, which includes $100 million through the CEFC to support the manufacturing of products contained in recycled materials, such as recycled plastics, along with $20 million to support research into new and innovative solutions to plastic recycling and waste, $20 million for new product stewardship schemes and nearly $6 million for community campaigns to clean up plastic waste from our beaches and rivers.

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We've also invested $22.65 million this financial year for the Communities Environment Program to support a wide range of small-scale, on-ground projects that aim to conserve, protect and manage our environment. The program seeks to support community groups to address local environmental priorities and also seeks to encourage the community to connect with their local natural environment and to build and strengthen local communities. This program is encouraging local groups to take environmental stewardship and responsibility for the protection of our precious environment. In addition, the government is supporting industry-led national targets that include the phasing out of problematic and unnecessary single-use packaging and is continuing to phase out products containing harmful microbeads from the Australian market.

In 2016-17 Australians generated about 67 million tonnes of waste, and that figure is increasing. The cost of food waste alone in the economy is estimated at $20 billion each year. Even as householders, we have responsibilities for waste. Usually this means putting our waste and recycling out for collection by our local council. We must always deal responsibly with waste and work together to better manage waste so it doesn't harm the environment. I know that Australians care deeply about recycling and caring for our precious environment and they want to be confident that when they put things in their recycling bin or deliver them to the collection centre these things will be repurposed effectively, not simply dumped in landfill or sent overseas.

Together we must take personal responsibility and exercise environmental stewardship to ensure that we take the appropriate measures and actions needed to cut down on waste, manage our waste and ensure that Australia's environment is protected and cherished—because it's our waste, it's our responsibility.

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