Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sixty-seven million tonnes of waste is what Australia produced in the 2016-17 year—67 million tonnes! I imagine that's around the same amount as we use in domestic black coal. Of course, one of the big issues we have is that countries that used to take our garbage don't want it anymore, and that's fair enough. Countries like China say, 'It's your problem; you look after it.' And so we should. Of course, that means we're going to be a lot more reliant on recycling and are going to have to pay the cost of it domestically. We'll also need to be very aware of exactly where we go for the landfill and of the methane and other by-products of it.

I'm chair of a committee that is actually looking into this, and I must say at the start that it would be helpful if we had a closer connection to other people who are passing legislation on it. I want to acknowledge the people on the committee: the deputy chair, who is the member for Cunningham; the member for Cowper; the member for Higgins; the member for Hughes; the member for Moreton; and the member for Wentworth. We used to have the member for Paterson, but she's gone on to higher duties as the shadow assistant minister for defence.

By reason of the fact that others don't want our garbage, we have to process it ourselves, and one of the great examples of that is Veolia, which is not that far from Canberra, actually. They use an old quarry. They collect rubbish from Sydney and also from Canberra. What's interesting about that is that a lot of what is recycled is turned into, basically, fertilizer. That is because a lot of it's vegetation waste and it goes back into fertilizer, and that's a great outcome. The member for Warringah just brought up the issue with plastics, and especially PET. That is one of the big problems that we have to deal with. In fact, if you go buy yourself a bottle of Coke or something like that, you'll notice there are different types of plastics. There's plastic in the bottle, there's plastic in the wrapping and there's a little bit of plastic around the top, where you take the lid off. It's the stuff around the top that causes a lot of the problems—the other stuff can be recycled. But this breakdown of the component parts is something that I was never aware and have now been made aware of through that.

Plastics have become more abundant. I remember back in the eighties—there are few of us around here who would remember; Minister Irons would remember—that once upon a time you used to take water from a tap. It was fee. I remember people coming along and saying, 'One of the biggest sales in the future will be bottled water.' We said: 'How absurd is that? We're going to pay for something we get for free?' They said: 'You watch the markets. That's precisely what will happen.' And they were right. Of course, now we've gone from bottled water to bottles themselves, and they're creating a massive problem as they become part of the waste. Some of the things we can do to reduce waste will also reduce costs: we can avail ourselves of this wonderful invention, the tap—a tap and a glass, or a water bottle that is recyclable. A lot of them are steel. These are the sorts of small things that you can do in your own life which will make a big difference.

What we must also note is that we've got opportunities with recycling waste as well as problems. One of the opportunities is people close to the major capitals don't want garbage tips near them anymore. It's funny, but they are kind of over it. But other areas out west wouldn't mind it, if they get the industry that comes with it. That's because they've got remote areas and mining pits and areas that could avail themselves to becoming the industrial or economic base of those areas. We've had representations in our committee from those councils, and I think that's something we can work on.

We're building the Inland Rail at the moment. As I always say, you have to claim your wins, and I was very happy with the National Party paying the money for that as part of the coalition agreement that I did with then Prime Minister Turnbull—in fact, he wasn't the Prime Minister when we did it; he became the Prime Minister afterwards. What that means is that, with utilisation of such things as the Inland Rail, we have the capacity to get trains with a large amount of waste to regional areas. I might just suggest one of the advantages of that. As you know, we pull coal out of a whole range of places in New South Wales and it all makes its way to Wollongong or Newcastle to be loaded. Then all of the carriages—about 80 in a train; they can carry up to 120 tonnes each, but they load them to 100—go back out to the coalmines in the Hunter Valley, to Maules Creeks near Narrabri and to other areas empty. Logic would say that they are going to burn the coal—it's not as if you're going to have to eat it—so if the coal is coming in one direction, we might be able to utilise some of this infrastructure to take rubbish in the other direction. As coal comes out of a hole in the ground, when those holes are finished with we could utilise them, basically, for remnant landfill. What we do now is we actually put pipes through it. We line it and put pipes through it, and we collect the methane off it. That turns the turbine and creates power—not exceptional amounts of power, but enough power to warrant doing it.

These are the by-products we get. We can recycle things back into their core components, such as steel and scrap metal, which can be recycled back into metal; plastics can be recycled, as long as you break them down into the component parts; vegetable matter can be recycled back into fertilizer; and what we don't recycle can be utilized in landfill, which is not the best way, but even with that we get the capacity to fill in holes, create methane, turn a turbine and create power. And we have the infrastructure in Australia to progress with this in such a form as we can do it away in the cities. It's going to have a cost. There is a cost on this and that cost is going to go back to the people who either create the rubbish or put the rubbish in the bin. At this point in time I think it's predominantly on the people who put it in their bins. It's on your rates and that's where it's off to.

We have some problems and we need some attitudinal change. We have the example of multiple bins. We have the red bin, we have the yellow bin and we have the green bin. The red bin is for your dirty nappies and stuff like that. Your yellow bin is for things that you deem, or the council tell you, can be recycled. The green bin is for vegetable waste. These have been well taken up and people are pretty diligent about what they do. We have had some instances where they go to the tip and it all ends up in the same hole, because the cost of recycling it means that it's not warranted. That has obviously got to change. Once more, if I might direct you to, they believe that the methane that can be produced from the Tamworth tip alone could power the hospital. So it is worthwhile noting. But we have to have the capacity of what we put in that yellow bin to actually end up being recycled.

We've also had the benefit, over time, of an attitudinal change. You might remember once upon a time driving along a road in Australia and it was just festooned with rubbish. When people finished stuff they would toss it out the window. To our credit, Australia has been incredibly good at stopping that. We still get instances of it, but overwhelmingly it's seen as a very bad move. If someone sees you throwing rubbish out the window it's an indictment on your character. You wouldn't do it anymore but in the past people didn't blink at it. That shows the attitudinal change that progresses towards recycling. So Australia has the capacity within its population to go down the path of recycling.

The speaker before mentioned the prospective member for Groom, a gentleman by the name of Garth Hamilton. He is standing for the seat of Groom for the LNP. He was also part of the Green Shirts movement, something that I am involved with myself. I am sure if he gets the nod from the people of Groom he will be a great adornment of this parliament. I believe, with seat such as that, that he may well have a very long career.

I also would like to acknowledge what Dr McVeigh did, both at a local level and at a state level, and then finally at a federal level. Dr McVeigh was most certainly a very capable and apt politician and an incredibly decent man. Why would I be mentioning Groom? Because we also have the issue of waste and one of the wastes that needs to be recycled is water, sewage. This caused a massive problem in Toowoomba, because people didn't like the idea of recycling sewage and it ending up in their drinking water. But other countries do it—Singapore for one. Even in London they say it's been through a couple of kidneys before you drink it. If we can't deal with the issue of recycled water, waste water, then we should at least walk down the path of having industrial use for that water.

When I was in St George in western Queensland we had three lots of pipes in our house. We had brown water, which was used for your toilet. If you are going to poo in something there's no point doing it in potable water. Then we had bore water for washing. And we had drinking water. If you went into a house and saw clear water in the toilet that was not a good sign. In fact, I think there was some fine on it. It just makes sense. Why would you flush potable water? Why don't we use recycled water for industrial uses, for sewerage uses. Why don't new sub-divisions look towards the reticulation of different forms of water and utilise them for different forms of use?

This is another progression of the attitudinal change. Referring back to what happened in Toowoomba, we are going to see this more and more in other areas.

We see ourselves in many instances with a form of water crisis and we are having to build more water storages for a growing population. But, in the future, this will come hand in glove with a form of recycling. We can see the problems that even Sydney is having, having to expand Warragamba Dam, which it should do, with such things as Indigenous claims, fauna claims and flora claims. All these things have to be dealt with. But, whether you like it or not, the population's going to require more water and, therefore, we have to work out from what source it is going to come. If you decide you are going to do it through desalination, desalination is bottled electricity and Australia has the dearest power prices in the world, or certainly in the OECD, and so that is a very expensive alternative. So we will be forced, whether we like it or not, towards the recycling of water.

I want to commend the members of the committee that I am working with at the moment. We have a great committee. It is very bipartisan. I want to commend the support of the member for Cunningham and the work she is doing towards this. We look forward to delivering a report. I think we are just about through all the witnesses. Today our committee will have one final meeting before we deliver a report on rubbish—that won't be rubbish!—in the coming days.

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