Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] Thank you very much, Acting Speaker. It's nice to see you. I hope to be up there in Canberra with you all in the not too distant future. Listening to the member for Ryan give his contribution was a little perplexing to be honest, because the member for Ryan spoke about his time and his friends in the Brisbane City Council, about how he was rummaging around and busy supporting a carbon neutral Brisbane City Council. My advice to the member for Ryan is: if you're so enthusiastic about carbon neutrality maybe get your government to commit to net zero emissions like the rest of the world, maybe join the rest of the states, maybe join the Business Council, maybe join the Farmers Federation in actually committing on a pathway towards carbon neutrality, but of course they're not going to.

I listened carefully also to the member for Mackellar who spoke about how the Labor Party likes to make political hay about climate change, that's because the government's not doing anything about it. It's not hard to see why when the Prime Minister, instead of actually taking action on climate change, tries to use recycling as the excuse for his inaction on climate change. But we all know that the member for Mackellar, the member for Wentworth and the member for Goldstein are part of a very small group of MPs on their side of the House who have to sit in the corner of the party room, whose views are not really allowed to be expressed openly, because the views of others in the party are far more prominent. Like the views of Senator Rennick, who accused the Bureau of Meteorology of having a conspiracy and fudging the weather data—that's a view that reflects the views of the government—or Senator Molan who said that he doesn't take into consideration evidence when forming his views on climate change, or even the member for Hughes who just flat out denies that climate change is a thing altogether. They're actually the views that represent the views of the federal government.

On that the Labor Party takes a very, very different view. The Labor Party takes a view where we need to move forward and we need to take action on climate change, on emissions and, of course, on protecting our environment. This bill and these bills before the House are bills that we would support. The huge changes in the recycling sector have meant that Australia needs to take more responsibility of our waste reduction and of our waste products. Unlike the government, we don't believe that everything should be done by the states. We believe that the federal government should have an active role in steering, in funding and in moving Australia towards a more circular economy and towards better management of our recycling.

I'm not up in Canberra at the moment. I'm home in my electorate of Macnamara. Last night I was watching an episode of Utopia, a great show, where the characters were talking about the future infrastructure fund. It was a $100 billion fund where they were going to take money now, put it in a fund, but not spend a cent. It was going to be about future infrastructure. Of course, there were infrastructure needs at that moment. That episode highlighted how the future infrastructure fund is all about the future. That can be a pretty good analogy when art imitates the life of this government. I remember the Prime Minister set-up a $100 million recycling fund—$100 million! He put it on a brochure. Of course, we now know that 72 per cent of that announcement hasn't been spent. The government's answer to dealing with recycling is to copy the world of Utopia by setting up future funds. 'Let's put it in a glossy brochure; let's put it in a media release,' but not actually do anything about it.

This government isn't good at recycling products, but one thing this government is good at recycling is announcements. They love recycling announcements. There's not an announcement they won't use again. They'll use the same one time and time again to resell an initiative but not actually do anything about it. The $100 million recycling fund that the Prime Minister announced on the world stage was actually a re-dressed announcement of money that already existed in the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. The government are not actually interested in doing things and moving the dial forward. What they are interested in doing is recycling announcements and making sure that everyone knows how glossy their marketing products are.

The government have set themselves targets around recycling which, just like the emissions reduction targets, they are nowhere near on track to meet. It's 'say lots, do little'; that's their approach to recycling. They've got lots and lots of plans and lots and lots of announcements, but they haven't actually set up a pathway to be able to achieve their 70 per cent reduction by 2025, and we're currently at 16 per cent reduction. This government really, really needs to do better. And that comes, unsurprisingly, amid broader failures on environmental reform and emissions reductions, which all go hand in hand. We cannot separate plastics, recycling and emissions reduction from habitat destruction, biodiversity destruction and the really serious state of our environment right across this country and, obviously, across the world.

I want to talk a little bit about local action to contrast action taken locally with the action—or the lack of action—by the federal government. In Macnamara, we are so lucky to have such a wonderful coastline around our electorate. We're right on the bay. My electorate goes from Port Melbourne all the way down to Elwood along the coastline and then cuts inland a little bit. We take great pride in our local beaches and we take great pride in our walkways and our waterways. At the last election, we actually had a policy for cleaning up some of the waterway that travels through my electorate and out into the bay. It was a great initiative that locals were really excited by, and I can assure you that it hasn't been taken off the agenda. It's something that whoever is in charge should be looking towards, because the quality of the water in the bay in Melbourne and through Melbourne is important, and it affects the biodiversity of our bay and the biodiversity of our waterways.

Some of the other great work happening locally that I wanted to mention is, first of all, to do with the Port Phillip EcoCentre—and, on Sunday, I was very pleased to attend their AGM. The eco-centre is one of the jewels in the crown of our local environmental organisations. They do brilliant work around monitoring biodiversity, and on plastics—the use of plastics, where plastics end up, the effect that plastics have. They also help and contribute to some of our really special wildlife hotspots, from Elsternwick Park to the St Kilda pier and its penguins. They are a brilliant organisation, and I would like to take this opportunity to recognise them and also to put on the record again my personal support for their potential redevelopment. They are looking to create a local hub for education and environmental management in St Kilda, at their current premises. They're looking to create a centre of community use and environmental management. I was pleased to support it at the last election and am fully supportive of the project right now.

I'd like also to acknowledge BeachPatrol, who spend their weekends basically protecting our bay and protecting our beaches. These are locals who give up their time to make sure that the plastic that we use and ends up on our beach fronts is collected and doesn't potentially affect the wildlife and the marine life in the bay. BeachPatrol, including my friend Ross and his team, do a wonderful job, and I'd like to give them a shout-out for all their efforts in working towards reducing the plastic and recycling imprints on our local area.

It is absolutely crucial when speaking about recycling that we mention the government's really appalling efforts in relation to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The EPBC Act should be the linchpin of environmental protection and habitat protection. Among the key recommendations of the Samuel review, as mentioned by the member for Fremantle—I acknowledge his contribution and leadership in this policy area—are to have a federal regulator and to have strong national standards. It is not enough just to deal with the recycling issues that these bills confront. It is also crucial that we make sure that we are protecting habitats and protecting biodiversity locally and also protecting the animal life that exists. The government had a brilliant opportunity to strengthen our environmental protections and do something profound, something that this country would remember as a great part of their legacy in environmental protections, but they couldn't bring themselves to do anything like that. Instead, they rushed through a bill that they gagged in the House of Representatives for no good reason. They just knew that they didn't want to talk about it for any longer, because it was such a disaster for environmental protection in this country. What a stain on their legacy that is. The environment and natural habitats will be around a lot longer than the Morrison government, and instead of doing their bit to protect our natural environment, the Morrison government's legacy will forever be that they rammed through a bill that weakened environmental protections in this country.

These bills are a step forward, but they are nowhere near enough. The government needs to stop recycling announcements. The government needs to stop doing glossy brochures and glossy media releases around recycling funds and future recycling funds and all the things that the Prime Minister likes to focus on. Instead, it should be looking at the proper reforms to reduce the amount of plastic production, to increase circular economies and to increase business accountability on the products that businesses create. It should also be supporting businesses to ensure that they have a shorter lasting imprint on our environment. We are custodians of this land. We are custodians of the waterways. We came to this country with a responsibility to look after it. The way in which this government constantly trashes the environment, trashes any legitimate climate policy and trashes its responsibility to protect our natural habitats and wonders will forever be a stain on the legacy of each and every member of this government. I acknowledge that there are a few members of the government who seek to sound different and have a unique voice in an overwhelming tidal wave of irresponsibility when it comes to environment, recycling and climate change, but the public know and the experts know that this government has failed on all of those accounts.

We, on the Labor Party, remain committed to properly protecting our environment. We remain committed to doing our bit. We remain committed to supporting the wonderful local organisations that we have, like the eco centre and BeachPatrol and many others. We wish the government would take a leaf out of their book, instead of the inaction that has riddled this government each and every step of the way.

See this speech in context