Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

(1) Clause 67, page 67 (after line 21), after subclause (1), insert:

  First priority list must cover packaging

  (1A) The Minister’s priority list that the Minister is required to publish under subsection (1) before the end of the financial year ending on 30 June 2021 must include packaging in the list of products referred to in paragraph (1)(a), and set out information as required under paragraphs (1)(b), (c) and (d) in relation to packaging.

  (1B) To avoid doubt, subsection (1A) does not prevent the Minister’s priority list from including products other than packaging.

  (1C) For the purposes of this section, packaging includes:

     (a) a container, wrapper, confining band or other thing in which a good is packed, or 2 or more goods are packed; and

     (b) anything around which a good is wound or wrapped, or 2 or more goods are wound or wrapped; and

     (c) a container that is designed to contain a liquid for human consumption (whether for the purposes of transporting or storing the liquid, or for the use or consumption of the liquid).

This amendment picks up the broad question of whether the newly created minister's priority list will be effective in dealing with some of the most harmful and most disappointingly unrecycled types of waste. There's plenty of evidence that a listings mechanism, which encourages a voluntary response from an industry or group of producers, has been pretty ineffective to date. Packaging is a very good example of that. That's why this amendment proposes to put packaging back on the minister's priority list from the outset.

While the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation is a worthy initiative, and there's no doubt its targets are worthy, unfortunately so far APCO has not been a vehicle for significant change. So far we're not on track to achieve the key APCO targets which are, in effect, the agreed targets under the National Waste Policy Action Plan. These include the elimination of harmful and unnecessary plastic products by 2025. They include achieving 50 per cent of recycled content in packaging and a 70 per cent rate of plastic recycling all by 2025. At the moment, the rate of plastic recycling for packaging is only 16 per cent. In a few months, it will be 2021, and 2025 is not far away. We should stop kidding ourselves that we are making great progress towards the 2025 targets—we're not.

APCO is effectively a voluntary scheme. To the extent that it does involve some obligations, those are supposed to be enforced through the National Environment Protection Measures, the NEPM, but, to a large extent, that hasn't happened. As I observed in the second reading debate, it's a shame that the NEPM review couldn't be landed in advance of the reforms we're considering.

I accept there has been some positive movement in the last year or so. APCO has worked hard to increase its membership and the government has just announced that APCO will move towards accreditation of the existing voluntary scheme, but this is very belated progress, and it remains to be seen what it will achieve. For all of those reasons, this amendment would add packaging to the minister's priority list from the outset. If the new priority list will be an effective and genuine means of achieving change, as the assistant minister has just described, then why not get started on one of the biggest problem categories right now?

The minister will still get to set the required actions and the timetable, as has been described. If the government is confident about the positive change that's in prospect through these mechanisms, then why hesitate to add packaging to the list? Australia is a sanctuary. Our environment is precious. When it comes to waste and recycling, we haven't done tremendously well. We're not doing well. There's a huge amount of plastic in our oceans, washing up on our coast, and a lot of it is from us. We do very poorly at 12 per cent of plastic recycling across the board and 16 per cent of plastic packaging. That's not good enough. We don't really have a lot of reason to be sanguine or to be optimistic about it.

Considering how poorly Australia does when it comes to plastic pollution, considering how little progress we've made and considering how far off track we are with respect to the National Waste Policy Action Plan's plastic and packaging targets, there really is no good reason or excuse to avoid adding packaging to the minister's priority list right now, which is precisely what this amendment seeks to do. On that basis, I commend the amendment to the House.

See this speech in context