Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the members opposite for their contributions. As flagged, I will shortly be moving some government amendments that may address some of the issues that have been raised by the opposition and others. Regarding packaging and the proposal to add packaging to the minister's priority list, the government does not support those amendments. I certainly do understand the desire to see fast progress on packaging—we share that desire, and I'll return in a moment to what the government is doing—but it's worth really focusing on what this particular proposal means.

Adding packaging to the minister's priority list does not make logical sense and leads to a somewhat redundant outcome. Let's be clear why that is. The minister's priority list is a mechanism to do one of two things. It's either a government encouraging industry and experts to create and bring forward a new scheme or it's a government flagging that regulation is likely to be considered in the future. Right now for packaging there is already a scheme and there's already regulation. In fact, there's more than just regulation. There are laws and, as has been referred to by other speakers, the National Environment Protection (Used Packaging Materials) Measure 2011 and its state counterparts. If we think through for a moment how it would ultimately play out if this proposal were adopted, the minister would put packaging on the minister's priority list and then after, say, 12 months the minister would have to come out and ask, 'Has anyone come to the scheme?' Of course, everybody would say, 'No, because there is already one,' at which point the minister might say, 'What if I regulate? That's the other option available to me,' and everybody would have to reply, 'There are already regulations and laws, and they existed before you put this on the priority list.' So you can understand, I think, by going through that process, why I see that this would be a potentially redundant outcome if the parliament were to go ahead and do what is proposed. In my view, it's the wrong lever to pull. The real action, I suppose, is already further progressed, much further along than a listing might achieve.

So I say respectfully to members opposite that there are more-effective actions that we can take, and that our government is acting in the following three ways. First, the government has officially endorsed the strong and ambitious 2025 packaging targets of the Australian Packaging Covenant, including for all packaging in Australia to be recyclable, reusable or compostable, and to achieve 70 per cent recycling rates for packaging by 2025. So we're backing Australia's packaging targets and we're helping the progress being made there, through our policies and our reforms and by way of our government funding. We've negotiated to increase some of the packaging targets and we've enshrined the targets at the highest levels of the National Waste Policy Action Plan, agreed to by all governments in Australia. Second, in relation to the packaging scheme we already have in Australia, the bills we're debating now will help that scheme to be a better and stronger scheme. The Packaging Covenant have publicly said that, as soon as parliament passes these laws, they'll take advantage of our reforms, they'll seek accreditation of the scheme under our new laws and they'll seek to utilise some new powers and mechanisms contained in our reforms, such as the ability to work closely with the minister to address issues like free riding.

Third, in relation to the packaging laws we already have in Australia, which have been referenced, if one believes that those laws are in need of improvement—specifically I call out the potential issue of enforcement given that no Australian state has taken enforcement action under their laws in recent years—then obviously the best course of action is to directly amend those laws. I note that our government is reviewing the NEPM for used packaging right now. That's underway.

There are other government actions which will significantly improve the recycling of packaging. Our government is working on finalising a national plastics plan right now, and it's funding the creation of a new product stewardship scheme. The government is working tirelessly on our nation's priorities for waste reduction across all waste streams, including packaging. Those actions I just outlined, in my view, are the more effective ways to tackle packaging issues, and that's what our government is focused on.

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