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

It's wonderful to be able to speak on this motion moved by the member for Higgins, because it goes to the heart of the type of country we want to be. It goes to the heart of whether we're a nation that takes responsibility for itself as part of a global community and the action that we take as citizens, community and country to make sure that we steward our environment from one generation, healthy, to the next.

Those are the values and those are the principles that motivated me to be in this chamber in the first place. They're the cornerstone of liberalism itself. This motion is a very liberal motion about the responsibility that we take and this government takes in stewarding the health of Australia's environment to future generations. What we have done as a government has been about how we build the capacity for Australians to care for the bounty of our beautiful continent. We have provided $167 million to fund an Australian recycling investment plan to increase Australia's recycling rates, to tackle plastic waste and litter, to accelerate work on new recycling schemes and to continue to implement our commitment to halve food waste by 2030.

It's a plan, yes, that is designed in Canberra, but its focus is on how we work to empower community and citizens to take greater responsibility for themselves and do the right thing by our environment. Day in, day out we see this in our wonderful Goldstein community, made up of the City of Bayside and parts of the City of Glen Eira. Both councils, working with community organisations, continue to lead in caring for our environment. In fact, both recently introduced the capacity to put food waste in bins so that it can be recycled and harvested to generate energy. This is part of a long-term plan to develop compost for our community, to stop the waste, to stop so much food waste being put aside and discarded only to go to landfill.

What's been really disappointing is that while we have councils taking such strong action, engaging residents to do the heavy lifting, and we have a federal government that has made this a big priority—and I want to particularly recognise and pay respect to Minister Trevor Evans; he has done a wonderful job in leading a discussion around the improvement of waste management across the country—there has been so little action, frankly, from our state government in Victoria, which seems to say the right things, but when it comes to an action plan for getting things done it has been left by the wayside. It has allowed us to end up in a situation where we have such a big crisis around waste in our state, and ultimately across the country.

We are not just focusing our energy on what we need to do at the higher level around strategy. Yes, it is about empowerment, but it is also about the capacity and the opportunity that waste provides to recapture as part of a circular economy and to build the industries of the future. The $167 million that we have provided includes $100 million through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to support the manufacture of lower-emissions, energy-efficient recycled-content products, such as recycled-content plastics, paper and pulp. It includes $20 million for a new Product Stewardship Investment Fund, which will accelerate work on new recycling schemes, such as batteries, electrical and electronic products, photovoltaic systems and plastic oil containers.

These important, simple but clear measures from this government stand in such stark contrast to the ineffectiveness of our state government, which is why I was so happy to see the Victorian opposition only yesterday come out with a clear plan on the waste crisis in our state—how it can be harvested and reused and repurposed for fuel energy generation. This is the sort of big-picture thinking that Australians want to see from the federal government and the state governments, where we can turn a burden into an opportunity and set the course for a safe environment that stewards it for future generations.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I go out into my community and stand at the train stations and shopping centres, I hear from my community that they are, I suspect, decades ahead of our governments, in terms of what they need when it comes to reducing waste and using waste better. They are decades ahead. Mention community composting and they all say they want to be into it, but councils aren't providing it. Talk about the bigger issues of plastics recycling, the overuse of plastics in our packaging and the use of the wrong plastics and they are ready for action. The federal government needs credit for what it is doing now, but it is late and it is not enough. I don't believe it actually recognises the extraordinary opportunity this nation has to play a significant role in reducing waste and using it better, through the circular economy.

Waste is absolutely an opportunity. We have had our finger on the pause button on this for the last seven years and we have a lot of catching up to do. Waste is not just plastics. I will get to plastics but I want to cover some other areas that we should be talking about as well. I have seen companies recently working to recycle cotton—96 per cent of our clothing goes into landfill. They can make one cotton T-shirt out of 1¼ cotton T-shirts, by extruding it, like viscose. It is an incredible change, which allows an incredibly valuable material like cotton to be used over and over again and keeps it in its life cycle. We have two scientists in Australia who have announced in the last few days that they can now recycle plastic completely—all plastics mixed together—and take it back to its raw form. But they are going to the UK because there is not enough investment in Australia to support what they're doing. We have companies in Ireland and in Europe that are now taking palladium, rhodium and platinum out of road dust, using enzymes. It falls off the catalytic converters, and they collect it and recycle it—and they are making a living out of doing it. It is incredible stuff. We have phosphorus issues all around the world. We know that the world won't run out of phosphorus, because it is an element, but it will end up in our oceans. We are running out of usable phosphorus for our agriculture, and plants don't grow without it. Science tells us that if we collect it in closed systems we could recycle phosphorus at least 40 times before it becomes unusable, yet we use it once. It is applied to the land and then flushes down creeks into the ocean, where it does damage.

We know that it is only a matter of time now, and not a long time, before demand for drinking water exceeds supply—in fact, in some countries it already does—yet in Australia we flush our toilets with drinking water. We don't even use it once before we flush it down our toilets. We don't recycle our washing water or our shower water and use that to flush our toilets. We put drinking water on our gardens. The amount of waste we have in this country that we can address for the future of the world—not just our own future—is quite extraordinary. You can see it in my community: people are starting to take action, to use things they already have—to reuse, recycle, swap and sell, to reduce the land fill of reusable items. We can see the Bower running the campaign Right to Repair, arguing that our toasters, electric jugs and air conditioners should be repairable. Quite often they're not. They also recycle an incredible amount of material through that shop.

We have a Facebook group that has 36,340 followers called Parramatta Buy Swap Sell. It has 36,340 members who swap stuff between them around the area of Parramatta. You'll find so many young people now—if you talk to young people—who buy secondhand and swap and sell clothing. It's an incredible commitment to use less. You can see that movement moving right through the community.

We have sharing maps for Sydney, where you can go online and look at all the different organisations, not for profits and businesses that are starting to emerge in the reuse space, because the community is ahead of this place and ahead of its local councils. It desperately wants to do better. We already see the green shoots in our community. We've see the Darcy Street cafe as the first cafe in Parramatta to simply ban disposable cups. You have to take your cup in. It's doing incredibly well, and it's starting to work with others to do the same thing.

I have small businesses in my community coming to my office every day and complaining that they can't recycle bottles through their waste stream. The council doesn't collect recyclable bottles, so they quite often end up in landfill. There's much more to do for this government to catch up with the community. The announcements they've made are a good step. A lot of it is reusable, recycled money, so it's not new, but there's much more to do. (Time expired)

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise on this motion that was brought to the House by the member for Higgins. It brings attention to a national crisis that is—pardon the play on words—often wasted on us. We, as a country, generate some 2.7 tonnes of waste per person per year, nearly half of which ends up in landfills, our oceans, our rivers or, until lately, overseas.

I think this is a timely discussion on the back of National Recycling Week held last week. Contrary to common assumptions, there's no such thing as 'throwing something away'. When we throw something away, it must go somewhere. I know, from speaking to many around my electorate of Forde, people care about recycling and what they throw away. Australians want to be confident that, when they put something in their recycling bin or when they take their rubbish to the recycling centre, it will be repurposed effectively and not simply dumped into landfill or sent overseas, out of sight, out of mind.

Our waste is our responsibility and we should deal with it in this country. That's why I think it's important to see the Morrison government taking practical action to ensure this occurs—to better manage our waste and ensure that our valuable resources are recycled and reused effectively and consistently in this country. To that effect, we're investing $167 million to fund the Australian Recycling Investment Plan, with the aim of increasing our recycling rates, tackling plastic waste and fast-tracking work on new recycling schemes while continuing action to meet our commitment to halve food waste by 2030. More importantly, the Morrison government is working with our states and territories to implement an export ban on domestic recycled waste from July next year.

We are also committing to waste reduction targets for all states and territories under the national waste action plan. We're always looking to work towards building our country's capacity to generate high-valued recycled commodities and growing associated demand. I've said a number of times at a variety of meetings that I believe we have, in this country, an enormous opportunity to recycle our waste for our economic benefit. Importantly, if we recycle our waste and repurpose it, it reduces our reliance and need to continue to use virgin natural resources to create the products we need.

The ability to recycle and reuse has not only enormous economic but also environmental benefits for our country. One organisation just outside of my electorate but in the city of Logan is Substation33, which recycles e-waste. Importantly, it not only recycles e-waste; it gives skills and on-the-job training opportunities to marginalised or disenfranchised people through its program, building their skills and allowing them to get into the workforce. It has a dual purpose: it's about recycling e-waste, but it's also about giving people job opportunities. Importantly, some of the recycled e-waste goes into producing the flood warning signs that Logan City Council, with funding from the Commonwealth government, is installing across the city. So, again, we can see a number of benefits being achieved out of that recycling program.

The federal government has also invested $6.2 million in my electorate of Forde—again, in conjunction with Logan City Council—for the biosolids gasification project at the Loganholme Wastewater Treatment Plant. This Australian-first initiative will see sewage sludge turned into energy and biochar, and provide a more cost-effective and sustainable approach to biosolid disposal. The processing of the biosolids in the gasification facility is expected to reduce biosolids waste disposal at the plant by some 90 per cent. This pioneering project, which will be managed in part by Logan City Council, could pave the way for similar projects being replicated in councils across the country.

I would like to thank Logan City Council for hosting the very informative waste fair last weekend for families in our community to learn more about how they can reuse, reduce and repurpose their domestic waste. These are just some of the many examples of the wonderful work being done across our country. (Time expired)

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Higgins for bringing this most important matter to the House. The world is in the midst of a waste crisis. E-waste, clothing waste, plastic waste and food waste all present a serious and pressing problem to global environmental sustainability that ultimately threatens to undermine the world economy and livelihood of millions. Of these categories, no type of waste can eclipse the potential impact that plastics is having on our ecosystems worldwide. According to the McKinsey report, if plastic use continues at the current level, by 2025 a business-as-usual scenario would have global quantities of plastic in the ocean reach 250 million tonnes.

The problem is acute in Australia and nowhere more so than in an electorate like Warringah, where, as a coastal electorate, we see it in our oceans. The CSIRO has found that over three-quarters of rubbish along our coast is plastic, with up to 40,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre. Clean-up days are regularly held to pick up huge quantities of plastic, but we need regulations so that we preserve them and stop using so much plastic. We need to transition away from their use. The halting of Australian waste to Asia has put the onus back on us to determine the future of our race. While this has been a short-term crisis—the challenge has been straining local councils and government's ability to respond—it also represents an unparalleled opportunity to transition our economy to a more sustainable model—a circular economy.

In Warringah we have several companies leading the way at the forefront of waste management, from Edge Environment, a certified B Corporation and environmental consultancy, which assists clients with their waste processes and management by helping them shift to a circular economy, to War on Single Use Plastic, WOSUP, which is introducing novel ways to get rid of plastics. Supported by KPMG, WOSUP Australia is developing a cooperative research centre project, bringing together War on Single Use Plastic and the UNSW SMaRT centre to help translate their globally cutting-edge plastic recycling technology into a new commercially-ready prototype microfactory. The project will help to recycle plastics that are currently being stockpiled by local and regional councils. UNSW's cutting-edge microfactory technology will provide efficient plastic recycling at smaller scales than were previously feasible, which will enable recycling hubs to be implemented locally, something that local councils are very focused on.

But governments must act, too. There's a lot of good legislation occurring at state level, and for that I give my thanks to Minister Kean in New South Wales for the great success. Great work is being done by councils in my electorate. All three councils have plastic strategies, adopted by council. They include initiatives like Plastic Free July in Mosman; the Northern Beaches Council's Swap This For That program, which aims to reduce single-use plastics; and North Sydney's adoption of the Bye-bye Plastic Hello BYO campaign.

We need to expand with federal legislation to guide the transition to a low-waste economy. To that effect, we've got the Product Stewardship Act 2011, which provided a framework for managing environmental, health and safety impacts of products and the impacts associated with the disposal of products. But we need to put the onus back on the companies to make sure that there is incentive to ensure that the use of plastics is phased out. The National Environment Protection Council Act 1994 established a National Environment Protection Council responsible for making national environment protection measures and assessing and reporting on their implementation and effectiveness. Seeing good partnership between states and the Commonwealth and the new plan recently adopted by COAG—the 2019 National Waste Policy Action Plan—are all good steps in the right direction.

I must say, everywhere I go in the electorate of Warringah, at every school I visit, there is not a single student not focused on the war against waste and especially the war against plastics—in our beautiful oceans, in our beautiful environment. It is constantly being brought up. I had the pleasure yesterday of launching Operation Crayweed, led by Balgowlah Primary School, where they are looking at the reintroduction of crayweed in our marine habitats because it was all endangered and put into difficulty by waste and plastics. This is something we all have to be focused on. Our kids in our schools know this; they are focused on it. And now, as the adults and here in this parliament, we need to take the steps necessary to reduce our waste.

Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia boasts some of the most beautiful sights and sounds in the world. We have beautiful rivers, creeks, national parks, landmarks and oceans. We have an abundance of wildlife and sea life of all shapes and sizes. We have fauna and flora not seen anywhere else in the world, and this country is home to just 24.6 million people and their families. This is why we must exercise environmental stewardship so that we can stop waste from destroying our creeks, oceans and rivers; harming our wildlife and sea life; hurting our flora and fauna; clogging drains; and littering campgrounds and our national parks. All of this greatly affects the health of Australians, creates major economic losses, hinders economic growth and has devastating environmental impacts.

I'm calling on all Australians to take action on waste by taking personal responsibility and standing up and saying, 'Our waste, our responsibility.' Waste is an issue for all of us. We all create it, we all dump it, and that means we are all responsible for what happens to it. This is why I'm placing a high priority on creating new employment pathways through re-used recycling and remanufacturing initiatives in Longman. Data indicates that resource recovery and recycling employs more than three times as many people per tonne of waste compared with landfilling. This data also shows that recycling and resource recovery provides 9.2 full-time jobs for every 10,000 tonnes of waste recycled, compared with 2.8 jobs when sending the same waste to landfill.

We have organisations in my electorate of Longman that are already doing amazing work in this area, by encouraging the responsible use and protection of our precious natural environment through fantastic conservation and sustainable practice. For that, I thank them, and I take this opportunity to invite any business, social enterprise or not-for-profit that have as their core purpose reducing waste and creating jobs to come to Longman. The Morrison government is strongly committed to reducing waste, increasing recycling rates and building capacity within our domestic recycling industry. Australians currently generate 67 million tonnes of waste per year, 2.7 tonnes per person, of which only around 58 per cent is recovered.

Our government is taking practical action to better manage our waste here in Australia and ensure that our valuable resources are recycled and re-used over and over again. The Morrison government has committed $167 million to a comprehensive Australian recycling investment plan, which includes $100 million through the CEFC to support the manufacturing of products contained in recycled materials, such as recycled plastics, along with $20 million to support research into new and innovative solutions to plastic recycling and waste, $20 million for new product stewardship schemes and nearly $6 million for community campaigns to clean up plastic waste from our beaches and rivers.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Proceedings suspended from 12 : 05 to 12 : 15

We've also invested $22.65 million this financial year for the Communities Environment Program to support a wide range of small-scale, on-ground projects that aim to conserve, protect and manage our environment. The program seeks to support community groups to address local environmental priorities and also seeks to encourage the community to connect with their local natural environment and to build and strengthen local communities. This program is encouraging local groups to take environmental stewardship and responsibility for the protection of our precious environment. In addition, the government is supporting industry-led national targets that include the phasing out of problematic and unnecessary single-use packaging and is continuing to phase out products containing harmful microbeads from the Australian market.

In 2016-17 Australians generated about 67 million tonnes of waste, and that figure is increasing. The cost of food waste alone in the economy is estimated at $20 billion each year. Even as householders, we have responsibilities for waste. Usually this means putting our waste and recycling out for collection by our local council. We must always deal responsibly with waste and work together to better manage waste so it doesn't harm the environment. I know that Australians care deeply about recycling and caring for our precious environment and they want to be confident that when they put things in their recycling bin or deliver them to the collection centre these things will be repurposed effectively, not simply dumped in landfill or sent overseas.

Together we must take personal responsibility and exercise environmental stewardship to ensure that we take the appropriate measures and actions needed to cut down on waste, manage our waste and ensure that Australia's environment is protected and cherished—because it's our waste, it's our responsibility.

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Littering and mismanaged waste is a serious threat to our environment and significantly impacts the use, enjoyment and value of our local parks and waterways. Plastic waste, in particular, has a serious impact on our environment, especially our oceans and fisheries. Australians generate approximately 103 kilograms of plastic per person each year, but only 12 per cent of that plastic waste is recycled. The rest is either burned, buried or sent overseas.

Two per cent of our carbon emissions come from waste. It goes without saying that this is a significant issue for environmental protection, for sustainability and for our response to climate change. Unfortunately, when faced with the science and the facts, this government has been too slow in responding to Australia's growing waste problem. Two-thirds of the government's so-called recycling investment plan we're speaking about today is made up of repackaged loan funds. The $100 million Australian Recycling Investment Fund is nothing more than a new label slapped on existing Clean Energy Finance Corporation moneys. This is not a form of new investment and it's not matched funding as previously suggested by the government speakers today. There is no direct funding support, or in fact procurement policies, in place to help establish the necessary Australian recycling industry.

There is no doubt that Australians are ready to play their part by trying to use less plastic and re-use and recycle where possible, and businesses are willing and able to be part of major change. As an example, I am proud to stand in this place and speak about the success of my home state of Queensland and our pioneer cash for container recycling scheme. Containers for Change is a statewide program that gives Queenslanders an incentive to collect and return containers to designated collection points in exchange for a 10c refund payment. That 10c can either go back into their pockets or can be donated directly to a community group or sports club. The program is operated by the not-for-profit company COEX and it is backed by the Queensland Labor government. It aims to cut down on littering, encourage recycling and reduce the percentage of waste that ends up in landfill. The program has now been running for 12 months and it's going gangbusters. In the first weekend of the scheme, Queenslanders recycled almost 1.5 million containers. One year on, our recycling rate has increased from 45 per cent to 62 per cent, and a total of one billion containers have been returned across 330 designated collection points in the state. I would specifically like to thank Sandgate District State High School and Stafford State School in my electorate of Lilley for hosting designated drop-off points.

The greater Brisbane area alone has recycled over 402 million containers and received back $40.26 million over the past year. While the Containers for Change program has been a great success, with a 17 per cent increase in recycling over the past 12 months, we aren't done yet. Queenslanders have set a target to lift our recycling rate to 85 per cent by 2022. The statistics show that Queenslanders care about recycling and about keeping our state great. Feedback I've been receiving from my constituents at mobile offices in Virginia, Sandgate and Wavell Heights is that they love the program and they want more investment in developing effective and sustainable waste management systems to protect our environment.

Cleaning up our community is not the only benefit of Containers for Change. It provides benefits to social enterprises throughout Queensland by funding smaller scale infrastructure projects to set up donation points, to create fundraising opportunities for community groups, charities and not-for-profits. Investment in emerging industries like recycling and sustainable waste management not only has exponential impacts for the environment but it boosts local jobs and is great for our local economy. Through the Containers for Change program, 700 new jobs have been created across Queensland in only one year. Just across the border in New South Wales, new recycling technology is being created by Dr Len Humphreys and Professor Thomas Maschmeyer which can convert plastic back into source materials, including oil. This is a remarkable and promising breakthrough that illustrates untapped ingenuity in Australian scientific research and innovation. It could be used as a better recycling process creates new manufacturing job opportunities. Unfortunately, the company taking the idea to market has been forced to open their first recycling plant in the United Kingdom because this government does not offer the necessary market incentives and clear policy framework to support a plastics recycling facility of this kind in Australia.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for the debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.