David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The Product Stewardship Bill 2011 implements a cornerstone commitment of the National Waste Policy, which heralded a new, coherent, efficient and environmentally responsible approach to waste management in Australia. The policy, which was endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments in 2010, committed to establishing a national framework, underpinned by Commonwealth legislation, to support voluntary, co-regulatory and mandatory product stewardship schemes. Product stewardship involves shared responsibility for reducing the environmental, health and safety impacts of manufactured goods and materials across the life of a product.

Waste in Australia is growing. In the four years to 2007, the amount of waste generated grew by nearly a third, to around 44 million tonnes, which is the equivalent of over 2,000 kilograms for each Australian each year. Over the same period, the amount of hazardous waste has doubled. Even if the current recycling level of about 52 per cent is maintained, this trend could result in an almost threefold increase in the waste generated over the coming decade.

The nature of waste is also changing. The waste stream today is markedly different from 50 years ago when motor vehicles, refrigerators and televisions were less common, and home computers, mobile phones and compact fluorescent lamps did not exist. Today's goods are increasingly complex, and not only contain materials that can be re-used but also contain hazardous substances. As a result of their increasingly short product life, these goods now comprise a significant and growing component of the waste stream. At end of life, these products are placing a disproportionate burden on the general community rather than on those who use them or benefit from their use. Sharing responsibility is central to product stewardship.

Australia—as a responsible global citizen—is party to a number of international conventions, including the Basel convention and the Stockholm convention, which seek to reduce and manage waste and hazardous substances, including those substances that are persistent in the environment, toxic and accumulate along the food chain. Product stewardship can play a part as one of the means by which to achieve these goals.

These international obligations do not remain static. Under the Stockholm convention, some flame retardant chemicals present in many products are to be restricted or banned. There is also emerging global agreement on directions to reduce mercury emissions.

Mercury is present in many products. It is also harmful in minute amounts, and long-term, daily exposure above 25 millionths of a gram per cubic metre is considered unsafe. To place in context the importance of responsible end-of-life management of products—over 50 million lamps containing mercury, in particular street lights and commercial lighting, were imported into Australia in 2008 and these contained approximately 600 kilograms of mercury. The Commonwealth is responsible for ensuring that Australia's international obligations are met and the states and territories have the primary role in the management of waste under the Australian Constitution. This has led to a long history of collaboration by all Australian governments, anchored in the 1992 National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development. This was the first comprehensive domestic approach to waste and committed all Australian governments to improving the use of resources, reducing the impact of waste on the environment and improving the management of hazardous wastes.

The waste sector has also evolved to cover re-use, recovery, treatment and disposal of waste, and increasingly manages waste as a resource. This creates opportunities. Today the waste and recycling sector is valued at between $7 billion and $11 billion and employs a direct labour force of around 30,000.

The regulation impact statement for the National Waste Policy estimated the savings from a national product stewardship approach to be $147 million over 20 years. The regulation impact statement also identified the additional costs of jurisdictions implementing up to five separate product stewardship programs could be up to $212 million.

Product stewardship schemes are in place in many other parts of the world, including in North America, Europe and Asia. Electrical equipment, tyres, mercury lamps, batteries, packaging, chemical products and even cars are covered by such arrangements.

Australia has adopted many individual approaches to product stewardship. The Commonwealth's Product Stewardship (Oil) Act 2000 covers lubricating oils and its Ozone and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Management Act 1989 covers the management of ozone-depleting substances and synthetic greenhouse gases. South Australia introduced a mandatory deposit refund scheme on drink containers in 1977 and the Northern Territory has recently passed similar legislation. New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia also have legislation that can require product stewardship schemes. Used packaging stewardship is covered by a national environment protection measure that has been enacted differently in each jurisdiction since 1998.

A complex mix of rules and regulations applies to products and materials that are sold nationally by companies operating Australia wide. A single piece of legislation that allows for the consistent regulation of products and materials provides a more effective mechanism than an array of individual product legislation at both Commonwealth and state levels.

There is no doubt that many companies wish to do the right thing and are already involved in voluntary product stewardship schemes. Some of these schemes are familiar. DrumMuster recycles used agricultural and veterinary chemical containers and has reformulated products to reduce packaging and waste. Planet Ark takes back printer cartridges, MobileMuster deals with mobile phones, and more recently Fluorocycle started recycling mercury from commercial lighting.

The states and territories, local government, industry, business associations, the retail sector, environmental groups and the community actively support the National Waste Policy, and a national approach to product stewardship. Extensive consultation has been undertaken over the past two years, with strong levels of participation. To date over 1,000 people have attended some 80 public and bilateral meetings, and there have been around 320 public submissions.

The bill efficiently addresses the need for a simple enduring national approach to product stewardship through a single piece of framework legislation. Three types of product stewardship arrangements will be catered for. Industries and products may be regulated through either a co-regulatory or mandatory approach and voluntary product stewardship schemes can be accredited.

This framework will allow for different products and materials to be covered over time as needs emerge, and for the arrangements to be tailored to suit different circumstances in a changing international, social, environmental and economic context. Importantly there is also a comprehensive suite of checks and balances built into the framework to ensure it is appropriate and transparent.

The bill sets the framework under which products and materials can be regulated and the obligations placed on various parties. It sets out the governance arrangements, the powers of the regulator, and the reporting and audit requirements for organisations delivering product stewardship schemes. It provides the offences and penalties together with the compliance and enforcement powers.

For a product to be covered it must further the objects of the legislation, which are an expression of the aims and principles of the National Waste Policy and its product stewardship strategy. The product must also satisfy specified criteria, including whether the product is in a national market. As each product, material and industry is unique, the regulations will set out the details of what is to be regulated and the actions to be taken.

The actions required in the regulations may include the need to avoid, reduce or eliminate waste from products. There may be a requirement to reduce hazardous substances or to manage the waste as a resource. Importantly, there may be the obligation to ensure that products or waste from products is reused, recycled, recovered, treated or disposed of in a safe, scientific and environmentally sound way.

The intent of the voluntary element is to encourage product stewardship without the need for regulation and to provide the community with more certainty, through the use of a logo, that accredited schemes actually achieve what they claim. In particular, product stewardship organisations that are accredited will meet specific reporting and audit requirements, which will provide for both transparency and accountability.

Co-regulatory product stewardship schemes will be delivered by industry with only outcomes and basic operational requirements specified in regulation. A company will not be able to benefit from refusing to participate, so there will be no free-riders. Thresholds may be applied to avoid impacts on small business.

Mandatory product stewardship would set obligations for parties to take certain actions in relation to a product. The bill provides a comprehensive set of product stewardship requirements that can be drawn upon for that purpose. These include the ability to require labelling, to require producers to take products back at the end of life for recycling or to require a deposit and refund be applied to a product. These requirements are based on those already in use, such as those in the Ozone Protection and Synthetic Greenhouse Gas Management Act 1989.

There will be a rigorous transparent assessment and consultation process before a decision to make regulations on a product. This will follow the Australian government's regulatory impact analysis requirements. Through the Environment Protection and Heritage Council all governments have agreed that a national television and computer product stewardship scheme should be the first to be regulated under this product stewardship framework legislation. The decision regulation impact statement published in 2009 showed that a national television and computer product stewardship scheme would provide a net benefit to society in the range of $517 million to $742 million over the period 2008-09 to 2030-31.

Industry, jurisdictions and the community have sought national regulation for end of life televisions and computers for more than a decade. Around 32 million new television and computer products were sold in Australia in 2008, with an estimated 16.8 million units reaching end of life in the same year. Only 10 per cent are recycled, which is well below the average rate of recycling for all waste of 52 per cent. The volume of television and computer products reaching end of life is expected to grow to 44 million per year by 2028. This electronic waste is classified as hazardous waste under the Basel Convention.

The decision by all governments and industry to deliver this scheme is an important step towards sustainable management of electronic waste in Australia. This Product Stewardship Bill demonstrates the willingness of business, community and government to share responsibility for reducing the environmental impacts of products throughout their lives and will make a major contribution to achieving a more sustainable Australia.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to support the Product Stewardship Bill 2011. This bill in its most practical terms is about giving Australia and Australians a way forward for the recycling of television and computer waste, an area in which the waste stream is growing. It is about protecting both the health and the environment for future generations of Australians.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10:19 to 10:34

This bill has its origins, in many ways, in what happened in the 1950s in the town of Minamata on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. The situation was that the Chisso Corporation, set up in the 1930s, had been producing material and chemicals which were used in the production of plastics. One of the by-products was mercury. That mercury was allowed to leak into and be dumped into Minamata Bay. Over time, that mercury found its way into the food chain. In particular, it found its way into the shellfish, the crustaceans and the general fish community. It was ingested. The early 1950s saw what was sometimes known as the drunken cat syndrome, where small animals began to suffer and lost their motor coordination. Progressively this fed into the situation faced by the people of Minamata. It was an early warning sign in the postwar period of the danger, the impact, the hazard of heavy metal poisoning on the human population.

The Minamata story was slow to occur and it was slow to be recognised. But what occurred in Minamata and what occurred through the negligence of the Chisso Corporation was a message that progressively made its way around the world—the message being that we have responsibility for the stewardship of our products and we have responsibility for the by-products and consequences which flow from our products. Against that background of the Minamata disease, as it was known, and the profound impact it had on the people and the life of the fishing community of Minamata, we now come to the situation where product stewardship is a legitimate, important national responsibility for Australia in the 21st century.

Let me make this point about bipartisanship in environmental affairs. There are points of disagreement but there are also significant areas of agreement. Currently, the opposition and the government are engaged in three major areas of cooperative activity. Firstly, there is this product stewardship legislation. Secondly, we have recently provided support for the government's revised vehicle emissions standards. That is an important direct action measure which the government has taken and to which we have given our support. Thirdly, we have also accepted—although we have some concerns about the way in which it was done—the changes to the fringe benefits tax to prevent the ludicrous situation of people driving enormous distances immediately prior to the cut-off date for the annual calculation of kilometres, thereby increasing emissions, fuel usage and waste in our society. These changes will end the windfall gain to be received by driving further, although we do have some concerns about the impact on legitimate, proper activities of tradespeople and people involved in travelling sales.

Having said that, these three examples of product stewardship, emission standards and fringe benefits tax reform are all examples of cooperative action. Where we disagree, it is not disagreement for the sake of it but disagreement on the basis of an alternative principle—a concern either about the structure or the implementation. In the same way that, right from the outset, we identified the home insulation program as a potential, an emerging and finally an actual disaster—on each occasion eliciting a denial by the government that such a problem either would be faced or was actually being faced—we now place our concerns on the record about using a massive electricity, petrol, gas and grocery tax as the means to reduce Australian emissions.

Against that preliminary discussion, I will deal with this bill in four brief stages—firstly, the nature of the bill; secondly, the background; thirdly, the principle; and, finally, the detail. The Product Stewardship Bill 2011 establishes a national framework to support voluntary, co-regulatory and regulatory product stewardship and extended producer responsibility schemes to provide for the impacts of a product being responsibly managed during and at the end of its life. This bill is about providing a structure for whole-of-life management of consumer products and the components contained within them. Very simply, it is about making sure that in the 21st century there are no more Minamatas and that we do not face the Rachel Carson Silent Spring examples which she so courageously raised. She was one of the harbingers of the modern concern for environmental management, and she paid a difficult price at the time. She opened up consciousness about taking responsibility for that which we produce and therefore for the consequences of those products.

Having established the bill's purpose, I turn to the background to the bill itself. The commitment to establish the framework goes back a long way, through the Council of Australian Governments and in particular the Environment Protection and Heritage Council. There was discussion of the principle in November 2009 but I know discussions go back to previous years. I was involved myself in a discussion in Christchurch some years ago, on behalf of the Australian government, with the New Zealand government and the Australian states. There is a long heritage of bipartisan support for the concept and the direction, and I am pleased that we have been able to work with the government to achieve appropriate changes and amendments which will allow for a joint approach.

That brings me to the specific principle of the bill. The coalition fully supports the principle of product stewardship. This is the notion of shared responsibility for reducing the environmental health and safety footprint of manufactured goods and materials across the lifecycle of a product. That is drawn directly from the National Waste Policy. We support that concept; it is about doing things in a correct and appropriate fashion that will not inadvertently drive up the cost of living for Australians but will deal with the problem directly, head-on and in a way which can solve the problem at source. In particular, the coalition also supports the notion of voluntary schemes. Voluntary product stewardship schemes as set out in part 2 of the bill which sit alongside co-regulatory and mandatory product stewardship schemes offer a very prospective way forward.

I now turn to the detail of the bill. I praise the work of coalition members Senator Simon Birmingham and Senator Mary Jo Fisher, both of whom have worked with the government. In particular, the coalition worked with Senator Don Farrell on a series of amendments. The result of those amendments is that there are now three very specific criteria for developing and recognising schemes for accreditation under this bill. The first element is that the system be focused very much on containing hazardous waste substances, the second element is that there be a clear test on the potential to significantly increase the conservation of materials used in the products or increase the recovery of resources from waste from the products, and the third element is that there be the potential to significantly reduce the impact that the products or substances in the products have on the environment or on the health or safety of human beings. The origins of the last element can be traced back not just to Minamata but to some of the tragedies we saw through industrialisation in the 19th century.

Having worked on these amendments, we are pleased to adopt a bipartisan position and to support this bill. On behalf of the opposition, I am delighted to commend the Product Stewardship Bill 2011 to the House and to the Australian public.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise today in support of the Product Stewardship Bill 2011 because I do think this is a very important bill. While it is not one which draws the most amount of attention, I think it is a very good piece of legislation that really does work with local areas to make sure that we recycle and reuse Australia's waste properly.

Australia remains the second highest producer of waste per person in the world. The magnitude of Australia's waste stream has reached such a point that, in the four years to 2007, the amount of waste generated in Australia rose by 31 per cent, equating to approximately 2,000 kilograms for every Australian every year. Furthermore, over this same time frame, hazardous waste has doubled in Australia. However, these figures were recorded over a period when Australia's resource recovery from waste had also increased to 22.7 million tonnes or approximately 52 per cent. That is to say that despite increased action in the recovery of waste, Australia's production of waste is still growing each year. This comparison illustrates how significant work targeted at reducing the impact of Australia's waste is being negatively offset by the gradual increase in waste generated. In doing so it also highlights the significance of the bill before the House today.

The Product Stewardship Bill facilitates two important roles. Firstly, it implements a commitment to the National Waste Policy by establishing a national framework underpinned by legislative support; this means government-supported action on waste management. Secondly, it seeks to combat Australia's problem of increasing waste generation by extending the responsibility for reducing the environmental, health and safety impacts of manufactured goods and materials across the entire lifecycle of a product. The National Waste Policy announced in 2009 heralds a new, coherent, efficient and environmentally responsible approach to the management of waste in Australia. I think this is important because we do have many organisations that are out there working very hard; organisations such as Keep Australia Beautiful have done a lot of work. So it is important that we tie together these communities under a national framework. The policy has been fully endorsed by all Australian governments, through both the Environment Protection and Heritage Council and the Council of Australian Governments.

The key aims of the National Waste Policy are to significantly improve Australia's management of waste and to achieve an overall reduction in waste. Product stewardship effectively facilitates these aims by providing industry, communities and governments with a consistent national approach to the management of certain products. It engages with those involved in the production, supply and use of products to share the responsibility for the environmental impact throughout a product's life from its production through to its disposal. Product stewardship provides a basis for either voluntary, co-regulated or mandated actions to be taken by manufacturers, importers, distributors and others with regard to avoiding the generation of waste, reducing or eliminating the amount of waste from products to be disposed of, reducing or eliminating hazardous substances in products and waste from products, managing waste from products and resources and ensuring that products and waste from products are treated, disposed of, recovered, recycled and reused in a safe, scientific and environmentally sound way.

The bill provides a basis for voluntary product stewardship as an avenue for encouraging and recognising unregulated industry action. It provides for the use of a Commonwealth product stewardship logo, which will encourage industry to bring forward voluntary arrangements and will provide a means through which consumers may identify accredited products.

It also provides a basis for a co-regulated approach to product stewardship, which involves a combination of government regulation and industry action. The co-regulated approach will provide industry with flexibility in how they achieve their minimum outcomes and operational requirements. It may also be applied in situations where a substantial part of an industry wants to take action but is concerned about the remainder of the industry freely benefiting from their efforts.

Finally, product stewardship will provide the basis to establish mandatory product stewardship schemes. Such schemes could require that specified actions be taken with regard to the reuse, recycling, treatment or disposal of particular products, or even prohibit the manufacture or importing of products deemed to contain hazardous substances. Australia's waste is not only growing but its nature is also rapidly changing. Today televisions, computers, mobile phones and fluorescent lamps are consumed in mass amounts. Goods are becoming increasingly complex and now contain materials that cannot be reused and are potentially hazardous. Furthermore, these particular products have their expected longevity drastically reduced and, therefore, greatly contribute to Australia's waste stream. I have to say I experienced this very recently when I purchased a DVD player which was very cheap. It broke down within, perhaps, about three months, so I took it back for repair. They said that it was much cheaper to buy a new product and that it was not something that you repair, you just buy a new one. These things are only meant to last for about a year. It is important to note that these products are becoming a problem. The short-life products are now placing a disproportionate burden on the general community rather than solely on those who benefit from their use. Product stewardship rebalances this burden by placing responsibility across the manufacture, consumption and disposal chain.

Product stewardship programs are already in place in many other parts of the world such as Europe and Asia where it applies to electrical equipment, packaging, batteries and chemical products. Australia also has many individual instances of product stewardship. For example, South Australia introduced a mandatory deposit refund scheme on drink containers in 1977, and a similar scheme is now being implemented in the Northern Territory.

The current existence of differing rules and regulations that apply to products sold in Australia is both unnecessary and inefficient. Attempts to reduce Australia's waste will benefit greatly from a consistent piece of legislation governing the manufacture of products and materials. A national approach to product stewardship also has a huge financial advantage over state based regulations.

The scheme will be very important, and it will be rolled out in Australia over a five-year period by the television and computer industry, who fully support the scheme. The product stewardship scheme, as part of the national waste scheme, is the result of extensive stakeholder and community consultation. It has been endorsed, as I said, by all Australian governments and has received broad support from business and industry communities.

I believe this is landmark legislation and I take this opportunity to congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water for the work that he has done on this in bringing it to the House. I am pleased to hear that the opposition will support this bill because it is a very important bill. Usually they oppose, but they are going to support this bill and I certainly welcome that. I commend the bill to the House.

David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to thank the honourable members for Flinders and Kingston for their contributions to the debate on the Product Stewardship Bill 2011. The bill will put in place a more effective and consistent approach to reducing the impact of products and hazardous substances in products on the environment and on human health. The bill follows significant consultation starting in 2009 with the National Waste Policy. That policy, which was endorsed by Commonwealth, state and territory governments, committed to national product stewardship legislation. This bill meets that commitment. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.