Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] We've got a huge problem with waste in this country, and a lot of it has to do with plastics. We use them once and they're designed to be thrown away. What we've found out is that when you throw them away a lot of them end up in the ocean. Worse than that, a lot of the time we put plastics into the recycling bin thinking they're going to be turned into something else but find out that our recycling system is an absolute mess and a lot of plastic ends up getting dumped. Sometimes it gets put on a ship, is shipped to another country and is then dumped. Now we have the outrageous situation where even here in Australia there is a proposal to just burn it, supposedly turning it into energy, instead of either finding ways to recycle it or never producing it in the first place.

So, when the government said they were going to take action on the enormous amount of waste in Australia, and in particular take some action on recycling, a lot of us were pleased. We were pleased that the government, after many long years of turning a blind eye to this problem, might actually come up with a proposal to do something. It's pretty clear what it is you need to do if you want to get on top of the waste crisis; in particular, the plastics crisis but also the other forms of waste and the fact that we don't recycle them. It's pretty clear what you'd need to do.

Firstly, you'd need to ban single-use plastics—single-use plastics that we see in the form of wrapping for vegetables in supermarkets and sometimes even wrapping for individual vegetables and fruit, and single-use plastics that we see in many forms of packaging. They are made to be used once and then thrown away. Now, of course, there might be some instances where single-use plastics are critical, for medicines and the like, and of course we should have exceptions for those, but for broader use we should not have single-use plastics, because there are alternatives. To allow a product to be made that is designed to be used once and then thrown away is wrong. So we should ban single-use plastics. If we're serious about tackling the recycling crisis and the waste crisis, we would do that.

Secondly, we would also make the corporations that produce a lot of this waste, whether it's plastic, glass or cans, responsible for looking after it at the end of its life. This is sometimes called product stewardship, which means that you can take the products back to the place that they were made, or to some other place, and they're responsible for looking after them—because, if you've produced something that could end up as waste, then you've got a responsibility to look after it when it reaches the end of its cycle, because you've made some money out of it. So one obvious form of something like that is a container deposit scheme, getting a deposit back on your bottles and your cans, something that the Greens have been pushing for a very, very long time but that the government hasn't yet taken action on nationally. That is one thing you could do.

You could also start making other corporations responsible for taking back some of their products—either take them back to recycle them or have them required, by law, to repair them. That would be a good thing to do to ensure that products that were produced by corporations had to be looked after at the end of their life as well; you couldn't just produce them and then close your eyes to them. So you'd ban single-use plastics and you'd have some laws that required corporations to look after the waste product at the end, either by taking it back or fixing it, or by finding a way to turn it into something else.

Also, thirdly, if you were serious, you'd put recycling targets in law. We've had a good look at this. The Greens, through Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, initiated a wide-ranging Senate inquiry into waste that had a good look at what you would need to do. One of the things that became clear was that, unless the corporations who are responsible for producing a lot of this waste are required by law to do something about it, voluntary action just won't work and won't be enough to tackle the crisis at the level that we need to tackle it.

But this bill doesn't do any of those things. This bill does not do any of those things. What this bill does, though, is consistent with everything that the government has done so far, which is help give some money to big corporations and just hope they will do the right thing. So, in this bill, there are no required standards imposed on corporations who produce waste. The only thing in this bill is that waste can't be sent overseas. That's basically the main legally binding obligation. There are no legally required recycling targets, but there is a ban on sending waste overseas.

Part of the problem with that is that it could, in fact, work against itself. If you don't have a great recycling industry in Australia and you don't have all those legally required obligations that I've just set out for big corporations to take back some of their waste and turn it into something else or to find ways of not using single-use plastics and instead come up with recyclable materials—if you don't make the top of the chain responsible for dealing with the waste they create—plus you just ban everything going overseas, that might in fact, counterproductively, drive the so-called waste-to-energy industry, which just means burning plastics and turning them into electricity. Because there will then be a stack of it here on Australian shores and there won't be any legally required target for less waste to be produced, there will be places looking for ways to deal with this waste and they'll be coming up with not ways of recycling it, not ways of reducing its use in the first place, but ways of just burning it—and that is crazy. That is crazy. But this bill, because it doesn't contain those other elements, might in fact drive the burning of plastics here in Australia. It's consistent with the government's approach to everything, which is to not put legally binding requirements on corporations but just give them a bit of money and hope they'll do the right thing. It hasn't worked when it comes to trickle-down economics and it's not going to work when it comes to recycling, either.

Let's go back to some of the points that I made at the start. How ironic that the biggest legislative reform to waste management in a decade doesn't even mention plastic packaging. We all know what a problem that is. We all see it in the supermarkets and in the shops: single-use plastic packaging designed to wrap something up and then be thrown away, or single-use plastic bags. We all know it's a problem. This bill does not deal with that. Everyone is trying to do the right thing on this front. People keep their plastic bags in their cars and reuse them when they go to the shops. We try to cut down by remembering to take our bags. We don't always remember to do it, but everyone tries their best.

At the end of the day, one thing we could do is not produce these plastic pieces of waste in the first place. Why? It's estimated that at least eight million tonnes—tonnes!—of plastic makes its way into our oceans every year. Eighty per cent of marine debris is plastic. Numerous studies have clearly shown that the majority of plastic pollution found on Australian beaches is produced and consumed locally. So most of the plastic that our marine life eat and that kills them, and the plastic that ends up washing up on our shores as well as into our oceans, is produced and consumed locally, but this legislation will go nowhere near the urgent action needed to combat Australia's contribution to the plastic pollution currently choking our oceans.

These bills could be a valuable opportunity for the government to not only strengthen our response to the waste crisis, but, importantly, to address how we produce and consume waste, particularly plastic, in the first place. That's why the Greens believe that, if the government were serious about tackling plastic pollution, the Prime Minister would amend this bill to deal with those points that I raised at the start. When the Senate inquiry looked not only at this legislation but at the issue of waste generally, there was consistent feedback from stakeholders, including environment groups, local government and the recycling industry, that these bills don't go far enough to properly tackle our waste crisis and, in particular, our contribution to plastics in the ocean.

Without product stewardship, which, as I said, is making corporations responsible for the products they produce, and without mandatory targets, which is what key recycling industry stakeholders and local governments are not only asking for but saying is required if you want to drive down waste in Australia, this bill really does nothing more than repackage some existing obligations on producers in Australia. Also, it really just continues the government's theme of dressing up something in an announcement, but, when you look at the detail, you find it doesn't actually do the job and in fact might work against it.

The Greens have got answers to this. We have led on this in this parliament and we have a private member's bill in the Senate that would go far enough and that has received overwhelming support from the recycling industry, from the environment groups and from various governments across Australia. Our bill would introduce mandatory national targets—a requirement that corporations actually do something rather than hope that they will, the hope that hasn't turned out very well so far. Our bill would ban the most problematic single-use plastics found in the ocean. And we strongly believe that, unless there are binding provisions, we are going to be back here again in a few years having the same discussion.

The government should adopt the Greens bill, but, if the government is not going to adopt the Greens bill and side with our war on waste, then the government needs to accept our amendments. The Greens have circulated a number of amendments in the Senate that will strengthen this legislation. They would establish a mandatory product stewardship scheme for plastics and packaging and they would also ban the most problematic single-use plastics. We are pleased that the government has already taken note of some of the amendments, and we have seen them here in the House, but a lot more needs to be done. We urge the government to agree to some more, sensible amendments to the bill, because it will make a real difference to our oceans and, at the end of the day, that is what this is about. This is about making sure our oceans, amongst other things, are healthy. This is a big, big part of the reason for this bill. It is to stop plastic ending up in the oceans, as well as other places—our waterways, our creeks and our rivers—and to stop it ending up in landfill.

But we especially want to make sure that our plastics don't end up in the oceans killing marine life. To do that we're going to need a ban on single-use plastics, because that is a big part of the problem, and we're going to need some legally binding requirements on the producers and on the industry in this area. Just hoping that big corporations will do enough hasn't worked in the past. It's not going to work this time. The government has already, clearly, judging by the bill and the amendments, listened to the Greens in some respects and has adopted some of our proposals. We urge the government to pick up the rest of them. If the government doesn't want to do it here, we will move them in the Senate. Tis may be our best chance to tackle waste and to rein in the pollution that is choking up our oceans and our waterways. I urge the government, and the opposition and the crossbench, to have a close look at the Greens' amendments to this bill that we'll be pursuing in the Senate so that it has some teeth and we finally take some real action on recycling; make big corporations have some responsibility for looking after the products they sell, and make money out of, when they reach the end of their lives; and, most importantly, make sure we look after our oceans.

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