Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to make a further contribution on this debate, as when it was first discussed, many months ago, I made a partial contribution.

Leave granted.

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Bird, and opposition members for the indulgence. I think it highlights how strongly, I hope, we all feel about the importance of recycling as part of the health of our community. One of the core reasons that I'm a Liberal is that I believe strongly in the ideals of stewardship and that we inherit from one generation a healthy economy, a cohesive society and, of course, an environment that we all cherish. Our responsibility is to carry it from one generation to the next and to hand to the next generation not just what we have but hopefully what is better—an even more prosperous economy, an even more cohesive society and, of course, an environment that we cherish into the future. Of course, making sure we take the role of stewardship seriously is heavily dependent on what we do with our natural resources. I know this is a point of contention for many members in this chamber, depending on the topic we're discussing, but where we can seek to repurpose waste to a constructive use is core to the efficient use of the world's resources and is an utterly consistent consequence of having a free-market economic system.

Societies that promote waste, intentionally or otherwise, are those that don't use price signals. They're ones that don't look at how to be efficient, competitive and productive. That is something that we as a nation can excel at. That's why I welcome so many of the measures that have been made by the Prime Minister but also by our outstanding Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management, the member for Brisbane, who are doing a wonderful job of focusing on how to make sure we take our waste and use it constructively to build the growth in opportunity in Australia. Waste should never go to any other purpose than repurpose. Yes, there's a point about waste being our responsibility and that we have to take responsibility for ourselves—that's true—but we should want to repurpose scarce resources to an economically productive purpose. It helps us, as a society and a community: it should lower costs and of course it should build a greater sense of confidence within the Australian people, that we can solve many of the environmental challenges we face.

Consistent with that, the government has introduced the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020, which will phase in the end of the 645,000 tonnes of unprocessed plastic, paper, glass and tyres that Australia ships overseas each year. As a consequence, we're going to take responsibility for that waste in our country. It complements quite an expansive program of practical environmental measures by this government, where we implement programs that can materially improve the circumstances of waste issues in this country. We have a billion-dollar transformation of Australia's waste and recycling capacity by helping to build onshore demand for recycling content. This will create more than 10,000 jobs and divert over 10 million tonnes of resources from landfill.

It's not just the process of managing our waste and making sure it could be used for a different purpose, it's actually an economic opportunity to build jobs for the 21st century. Of course, in doing so, the Assistant Minister for the Environment, the member for Brisbane, has been leading discussions around how we promote regulation of product stewardship which will incentivise companies to take greater environmental responsibility for the end of life of the products they manufacture.

That's what this discussion is about: yes, recycling is about waste and making sure we minimise it. But the real focus is making sure that we put our efforts into responsibility for future generations.

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