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

I seek leave to make a further contribution on this debate, as when it was first discussed, many months ago, I made a partial contribution.

Leave granted.

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Bird, and opposition members for the indulgence. I think it highlights how strongly, I hope, we all feel about the importance of recycling as part of the health of our community. One of the core reasons that I'm a Liberal is that I believe strongly in the ideals of stewardship and that we inherit from one generation a healthy economy, a cohesive society and, of course, an environment that we all cherish. Our responsibility is to carry it from one generation to the next and to hand to the next generation not just what we have but hopefully what is better—an even more prosperous economy, an even more cohesive society and, of course, an environment that we cherish into the future. Of course, making sure we take the role of stewardship seriously is heavily dependent on what we do with our natural resources. I know this is a point of contention for many members in this chamber, depending on the topic we're discussing, but where we can seek to repurpose waste to a constructive use is core to the efficient use of the world's resources and is an utterly consistent consequence of having a free-market economic system.

Societies that promote waste, intentionally or otherwise, are those that don't use price signals. They're ones that don't look at how to be efficient, competitive and productive. That is something that we as a nation can excel at. That's why I welcome so many of the measures that have been made by the Prime Minister but also by our outstanding Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management, the member for Brisbane, who are doing a wonderful job of focusing on how to make sure we take our waste and use it constructively to build the growth in opportunity in Australia. Waste should never go to any other purpose than repurpose. Yes, there's a point about waste being our responsibility and that we have to take responsibility for ourselves—that's true—but we should want to repurpose scarce resources to an economically productive purpose. It helps us, as a society and a community: it should lower costs and of course it should build a greater sense of confidence within the Australian people, that we can solve many of the environmental challenges we face.

Consistent with that, the government has introduced the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020, which will phase in the end of the 645,000 tonnes of unprocessed plastic, paper, glass and tyres that Australia ships overseas each year. As a consequence, we're going to take responsibility for that waste in our country. It complements quite an expansive program of practical environmental measures by this government, where we implement programs that can materially improve the circumstances of waste issues in this country. We have a billion-dollar transformation of Australia's waste and recycling capacity by helping to build onshore demand for recycling content. This will create more than 10,000 jobs and divert over 10 million tonnes of resources from landfill.

It's not just the process of managing our waste and making sure it could be used for a different purpose, it's actually an economic opportunity to build jobs for the 21st century. Of course, in doing so, the Assistant Minister for the Environment, the member for Brisbane, has been leading discussions around how we promote regulation of product stewardship which will incentivise companies to take greater environmental responsibility for the end of life of the products they manufacture.

That's what this discussion is about: yes, recycling is about waste and making sure we minimise it. But the real focus is making sure that we put our efforts into responsibility for future generations.

Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome this motion. It's a wake-up call to the member's own government. The reality is that over the last 30 years, when in office the Liberal Party has been better at recycling its leaders than it has been about providing leadership in recycling waste. Today, as the motion notes, we have 67 million tonnes of waste a year, of which some 30 million tonnes is not recycled at all; it goes straight to landfill, never to be seen again and never to be used again. When it comes to plastic, we use 102 kilograms of plastic for every person in this country—each of us generates 102 kilograms of plastic in our consumption—and only 12 per cent of that is recycled. I think many people are shocked about that—I was definitely shocked, when reading this motion, to discover that only 12 per cent of the plastic that I use is recycled every year. That means my entire body weight in plastic is going into landfill each year. This has to stop; we have to do something about it.

It's not like some of the great challenges we have with the coronavirus or transitioning to a clean energy economy. We have all the technology to have a proper recycling industry in Australia right here and right now. And the next generation wants us to recycle more. Recently at his day care, my son did recycling for the week. They made little bins, they painted the recycling logo and he had a lovely time. And it was great learning; the downside is now that every time he spots the recycling logo he wants to rush to put things in the recycling bin. He will grab a full carton of milk and try to put in the recycling! I think that's a pretty good analogy for what the next generation wants us to do when it comes to recycling. They want us to get onto it and they want us to take it seriously.

My electorate takes it seriously—the electorate of Perth takes recycling seriously. I did a count: there are 23 buy-nothing sell-nothing Facebook groups in Perth, just in my electorate. These are people who are trying to find really practical community-led ways to recycle. That's a sign that people recognise their consumption is a huge driver in what we can do ourselves when acting on recycling. I will also give a shout out to two Instagram leaders in my community who do a lot in making sure that we share ways of reducing our own environmental impacts: @LessWasteKate and @treadingmyownpath. They are both great community activists who make sure they share their journey of reducing their waste.

Then you have entire social enterprises built on recycling, like Dismantle, which is all about recycling bikes and giving young people an opportunity. There's Perth College kindergarten, who wrote to me. I wrote to the Prime Minister about their desire to see local businesses use less plastic. The kids designed their own poster, with beautiful little turtles on it, and went around to all the shops near their kindergarten to put the posters up, to try to make sure that they could share their message about reducing plastics.

Then you've got the City of Vincent and the town of Bassendean, who will go from FOMO to FOGO. They have 'Food Organics, Garden Organics' bins, which will be rolling out this year and next, to make sure that we do more to separate our rubbish before it goes to landfill. The City of Bayswater have led in their desire to rehabilitate an old tip. The Riverside Gardens was the old Bayswater tip and is now a big grass patch. It's lovely. A lot of people walk their dogs there. They want to make sure that over time we can reforest that land. Their goal, to build the biggest urban forest in the Perth metropolitan area, is something I'm 100 per cent behind. Then there's the City of Stirling's resource recovery centre. You can take, basically, anything that doesn't stink there and it can be recycled. It is massive. Cardboard, fridges, televisions—anything and everything can go there. It's a great credit to the City of Stirling, what they have built. It's also a lot of fun to take your kids there. It is almost as much fun as the zoo, it's free and it's good for the environment, and it's a home to many bin chickens in the Perth electorate—it's just over the boundary but the bin chickens don't respect electoral boundaries, as many of us would know!

Finally, I'll just put a call out. The City of Perth has a mayoral election in a couple of months. The City of Perth's mayoral candidates need to get dirty. They need to get serious about waste. They need to get serious about a Perth CBD recycling plan. We will see, on 1 October this year, Western Australia finally have a container deposit scheme. I commend the McGowan government for that initiative.

Fiona Martin (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the member for Higgins for moving the motion. Each person in Australia generates 103 kilograms of plastic waste each year and, of that amount, only 12 per cent is recycled. To make that statistic more daunting, that waste is mostly recycled overseas. For too long we have buried this problem in landfill and shipped it offshore. Not anymore. The Morrison government is banning the export of plastic, paper, glass and tyres and investing close to $360 million in local waste and recycling projects.

The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 will phase in the end of 645,000 tonnes of waste that Australia ships overseas each year. It complements the Morrison government's billion-dollar transformation of Australia's waste and recycling capacity by helping build onshore demand for recycled content. This will create more than 10,000 jobs and divert over 10 million tonnes of resources from landfill. Those living in my electorate of Reid are passionate about protecting and restoring our environment and practising better waste management. Both the Cooks River and the Parramatta River run through Reid, and they should be pristine homes for the native wildlife in our area and beautiful places of recreation for local residents. Instead, we have seen the impact that plastic waste is having on these waterways. One hundred and forty-four thousand tonnes of litter settles in the Parramatta River yearly.

Earlier this year, environment minister Sussan Ley joined me in Reid for Clean Up Australia Day. At this event I had a chance to speak with local community organisations, like Our Living River, an initiative run by the Parramatta River Catchment Group to help make Parramatta swimmable again by 2025. Only a few weeks ago, I met with the youngest Riverkeeper Ambassador, Hannah Chalmers, who is a PLC Sydney primary school student and descendant of Sir Edmund Barton. Hannah has won awards for her environmental app, the Green Elephant. I have spoken at length, in this place, about the work that groups and individuals, especially our young people, are doing in Reid to protect our environment and I will continue to support their grassroots work.

While it is important that this work occurs on a local level, the government is also taking important steps to put waste management on the national agenda. We are growing our recycling industry so that waste management is more sustainable in the future. Australians generate about 67 million tonnes of waste a year, of which 37 million tonnes is recycled. We know that for every 10,000 tonnes of waste recycled more than nine jobs are created, so the Morrison government sees that 37 million tonnes of waste as an opportunity—an opportunity to tackle a serious environmental issue as well as an opportunity to create jobs. I'm proud to be part of a government that is innovating Australia's waste recycling industry through an investment of $20 million into a series of initiatives that will grow our domestics plastics recycling industry. It is essential for our recovery from coronavirus that the economy continues to grow domestically while also looking at ways to ensure environmental sustainability.

Waste related activities add $6.9 billion to the economy annually. We have the potential to take this growth further. This is why the government's Australian Recycling Investment Plan is critical in strengthening Australia's domestic recycling industry. It is rolling out a package of initiatives totalling $167 million, and only this week the Morrison government introduced landmark legislation that sees Australia establish a national industry framework for recycling. The people of Reid should feel confident that sustainable waste management is firmly on the national agenda. I encourage everyone in Reid to recycle and to learn what items they can and cannot place in their bins, because when you recycle your waste you are now creating opportunities for Australians. You are boosting our economy and creating jobs. The Morrison government has made sure of that. We will keep working to reduce unnecessary packaging and boost recycling in Australia.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Higgins for this motion. When China announced a ban on the import of recyclable plastic two years ago, it sparked a rethink of the way we do things that can lead to more investment in the regions and more jobs in the regions. Recycling is, in fact, a recycled idea. I come from a family of recyclers. My father, Jack Carew, was famous for bringing more things home from the tip than he ever took there. My brothers and I all had our bicycles built from recycled bits and pieces that dad found. My mother-in-law, Dorothy Haines, was quite famous for cutting up the fingers on rubber gloves and turning them into rubber bands.

But today I really want to talk about the opportunities we have for jobs. That's the story I think we need to be telling. Being smarter about how we use resources is not just an environmental but a jobs opportunity and a regional jobs opportunity. What would it look like if we got serious about growing jobs in recycling in regional Australia? I'd like to give you three examples. The World Wildlife Fund has published a $500 million proposal to establish a new domestic battery industry. Their plan would see Australia build seven new battery manufacturing plants, one lithium refinery plant and a suite of new infrastructure to recycle 6,000 tonnes of battery waste every year. This framework is an integrated mining-manufacturing-recycling chain, with jobs at every step of the process. The recycling part alone would create 7,000 jobs, mainly in regional Australia.

I've been talking a lot lately about the potential of renewables in regional Australia, and one question I get a lot is: 'What about the waste? What happens when a solar panel or battery reaches the end of its life?' These are reasonable questions. The answer is a positive one. This is another part of the recyclable, renewable opportunity for us. CSIRO estimates that today's lack of battery recycling in Australia represents a lost economic opportunity of from $813 million right through to possibly up to $3 billion.

Recycling organic waste is a second major opportunity for the regions. Consulting firm AlphaBeta last month released analysis conducted for the Climate Council that showed that expanding the collection and processing of organic waste could create 10,000 jobs over three years. This would be a new fleet of 10,000 organic waste collectors, treatment facility operators and construction workers. Most states have few or no organic waste recycling programs. In Queensland just one per cent of local councils have an organic waste recycling program. The opportunities at the local level are simply massive.

We don't need to just compost our organic waste. We can make energy from it. In Indi we host Australia's largest renewable biodiesel producer at Barnawartha. Just Biodiesel produces 50 million litres of biodiesel each year. It's made mainly from tallow and recycled vegetable oil. Our region generates 1.5 million tonnes of organic waste, mostly agricultural waste, like straw and forestry residues. Together these resources could supply 18 million gigajoules of energy a year. There is huge potential for a new regional export industry from this.

Right now our economic challenges dictate that we should be making targeted investments in strategic industries that create jobs quickly, building our sovereign capabilities so we aren't beholden to what other countries do, and laying the foundation for industries that will drive our prosperity for generations. Taking seriously our potential to use our resources smarter—our plastics, solar panels, batteries and organic waste—and transform them into new products would mean thousands of new jobs for regional Australia. I am really interested in that. I hope that the government is too and that it is smart enough to capture that opportunity for the regions for all of us so that we can not only recycle but create jobs.

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

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.