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

I thank the member for her contribution, her question and her interest in this topic. As has recently been announced, the Morrison government has provided $1 million of seed funding to establish Australia's first product stewardship centre of excellence. I can confirm that it will play an independent advisory role in relation to the minister's priority list and it will also play an mentoring and development role. I am sure the member will be pleased to learn that the centre will be run by the University of Technology Sydney's Institute for Sustainable Futures, and it includes in the team some of Australia's most experienced and engaged experts in product stewardship, including some of the best brains behind some of the most successful schemes that we have here in Australia. We're talking about experts like Rose Read, who helped develop and set up MobileMuster, and John Gertsakis, who's the co-founder of the Ewaste Watch Institute. They bring a wealth of experience to the table.

I note the member's interest in ongoing scrutiny of the work of the centre of excellence. There is a strong agreement—a memorandum of understanding, and an agreement between the department and the centre of excellence. There will be ongoing feedback between the centre of excellence and the minister in that annual product-listing process. And I can assure the member that any future minister operating in this space will absolutely have their door knocked down by people from industry, from businesses, from experts, from people who want to set up better or new product recycling schemes around Australia, and it will become incredibly apparent very early on to all of us if a centre of excellence isn't providing the support, the advice and the mentoring that they would be expecting.

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