Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that the 2021-22 budget continues to support significant reforms in Australia's onshore waste and recycling industries, including:

(a) $67 million to support new food and garden organic waste initiatives that assist Australian households to better understand what can be recycled, divert the amount of waste going to landfill and produce top quality compost;

(b) an additional $5.9 million to expand the existing National Product Stewardship Investment Fund to invest in innovative industry-led solutions to improve the way products are designed, reused, repaired and recycled; and

(c) $5 million to help small businesses to adopt the Australasian Recycling Label to help make recycling easier and to boost recycling rates;

(2) further notes that the $190 million Recycling Modernisation Fund is leveraging more than $600 million of investment in state-of-the-art recycling infrastructure to sort, process and remanufacture waste materials onshore; and

(3) congratulates the Government for its leadership in driving a once in a generation $1 billion transformation of our waste and recycling industries that will reduce Australia's waste footprint by 10 million tonnes, protect our environment and create more than 10,000 jobs over the next decade.

It's a great privilege to be able to move this motion in this chamber, Mr Speaker, because as you and I and other members in this chamber know, one of the foundation pillars of being a Liberal is a sense of responsibility to ourselves and to each other—as well as to our environment, to steward it for future generations. A critical part of this is the challenge of waste and resource management. In fact, one of the reasons why I am a free-marketeer is that I believe in the efficient use of the world's scarce resources. The way to do that is through the utilisation and repurposing of waste and making it valuable, as part of a circular economy, so that people want to use it and re-use it and not needlessly diminish the world's scarce resources.

Part of the challenge of doing that is making sure that government measures are there to support and incentivise the efficient use of the world's scarce resources: to repurpose them, reuse them, make sure they have a continued life and value-add to the Australian community and economy and stop the diminution of other resources into the future. That's why the Commonwealth government, the Morrison government, has made such a strong priority of Australia's waste and recycling industries, particularly, of course, from the leadership of the Prime Minister but also from the Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management, the member for Brisbane, who has made this a core part of his work. We congratulate him as well for his contribution.

Australia currently generates 2.94 million tonnes of waste each year, 60 per cent of which is recycled and the rest thrown away, ending up in landfill; being sent overseas, often, to be burnt; or in our ocean. Plastic pollution is choking our precious waterways. In just 30 years time there'll be more plastic than fish in our oceans. This is why we are so strongly committed to practical pathways that address recycling and reduce the amount of waste that goes into the ocean, including through the billion-dollar transformation of our waste and recycling industry, which includes $190 million for our Recycling Modernisation Fund to leverage over $600 million of recycling infrastructure to sort, process and remanufacture waste materials.

As many members will know, previously Australia has, as many countries have, simply exported our waste for a fee. Now we are taking responsibility for it, as we should. There is $100 million for the Australian Recycling Investment Fund, for products using clean energy technologies to support recycling. There is $49.4 million to help halve Australia's food waste by 2030. I know that my own local councils Bayside and Glen Eira are investing significantly in what they call FOGO to make sure there's a reduction in food waste, including the regularised pick-up, I understand, from next year of food and garden waste, with landfill waste pick-ups reduced to every second week to try and incentivise and encourage households to do the right thing.

We have the National Waste Policy Action Plan, to reduce waste, increase recycling rates and build capacity in our domestic recycling industry, including $59.6 million to the National Waste Policy Action Plan from the Commonwealth, to implement the waste export ban and to improve our waste data, because if you know the nature of the problem you can help fix it. There is $7.8 million on product stewardship for oil containers; a world-leading ban on the export of waste, plastic, paper, glass and tyres; $20 million for projects to reduce plastic waste and boost plastic recycling. At every point, we're implementing practical plans that will improve the recycling and waste management industries in this country as part of the broader framework of our environmental agenda to make sure that it's not just rhetoric but we're delivering in communities across our states and of course across the Commonwealth.

We should also celebrate those people who see the opportunity and seize it, not just to take responsibility, though that is a critical part of the conversation and something that we can all do. They see how there are opportunities in waste management and recycling—companies like SomerSide, which was founded by Gabby Samkova, who I've spoken about previously in this chamber, a 27-year-old Brighton local who creates towels using recycled plastic bottles. Each towel contains around 14 used plastic bottles that would otherwise have gone into landfill. It is stories like Gabby's that highlight how enterprise can come off the back of recycling to repurpose items in a circular economy and reduce waste. There are companies like CopperRock, a waste and recycling centre that's based in Cheltenham. It is owned by John, who began his stint in the industry 23 years ago, working as skip truck driver. They have an enormous amount of experience, working with local soccer clubs and community organisations to reduce their waste footprint.

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