Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hasluck for her question about recycling. I know she is absolutely committed to strengthening recycling in this country, as we all are. It's very true that we inherited ambitious recycling targets from those opposite. We were very happy to sign up to those targets at the time. Sadly, those opposite, in the four years after setting those targets, did nothing to achieve them. In fact, they set a plastic packaging recycling target of 70 per cent by 2025—sounds great, doesn't it? Guess what they got to? Sixteen per cent. It was 16 per cent when they started and it was 16 per cent when they left office four years later. They were addicted to announcements and hopeless at delivery. They promised 100 dams; they delivered two. They promised 22 different energy policies; they didn't land a single one of those. They promised to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, then they spent nine years sabotaging it. They promised 450 gigalitres of additional environmental water. They delivered two. They promised an anticorruption commission; they spent 1,200 days without delivering it. And they promised a budget surplus and left us with a trillion dollars worth of debt. These promises were not worth the mug they were printed on.

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