Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wentworth and acknowledge the work he's doing in support of recycling in his electorate, including the good work with Randwick council and their kerbside collections, because Australians want to be confident that everything they put in their recycling bin will be collected and recycled, not sent to landfill and not shipped overseas.

As the Prime Minister said: 'It's our waste; it's our responsibility.' That's why the government introduced today legislation that will implement the waste export ban agreed by Australian governments in March and also the legislation reforms to the Product Stewardship Act. I want to pay special tribute to the member for Brisbane and assistant minister for waste reduction, who has done fantastic work and put in great effort towards achieving these landmark reforms. The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 will phase in the end of the 645,000 tonnes of unprocessed plastic, paper, glass and tyres that Australia ships overseas each year. It complements the Morrison government's billion dollar transformation of Australia's waste and recycling capacity by helping to build onshore demand for recycled content. It will create more than 10,000 jobs, many of them regional, and divert over 10 million tonnes of resources from landfill.

Industry and communities have supported this waste export ban, which they view as a positive catalyst for change. They're joining with us: trolleys are being made from recycled milk bottles, toner cartridges are going into asphalt and green steel, and, in my home town of Albury, a company called Plastic Forests is making plastic fence posts, using soft plastic, to help with bushfire recovery. We've backed in the waste export ban with the most significant package of policies and funding commitments on recycling and waste ever brought forward by a federal government. This includes a national waste action plan that will achieve an 80 per cent average recovery rate across all waste streams and stronger Commonwealth procurement guidelines and halve the amount of organic waste sent to landfill. We're leading substantial investment in recycling through a new $190 million Recycling Modernisation Fund, which will leverage $600 million of new investment in recycling infrastructure. Australia's first National Plastics Summit was hosted by the government in March. It mobilised major pledges from leading companies, including the Pact Group, Nestle, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Coles. Its outcomes will help inform our first National Plastics Plan.

Our practical approach on tackling waste and recycling is consistent with our strong record of environmental achievement. Waste is not just an environmental problem to solve; it's an economic opportunity to create, and the Morrison government is seizing that opportunity.

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