Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water. Organisations like the Surfrider Foundation, Surfers For Climate Action and the World Surf League are working hard to reduce plastic on our beaches and in our oceans. What is your government doing to reduce pollution in our waterways?

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

I want to thank the member for Mackellar for that terrific question. If we don't do something much better on ocean plastics by 2050, plastics in our oceans will weigh more than fish in our oceans. This is absolutely something that the government is determined to act on, in a number of different ways. In the first instance, it's by stronger systems, reducing the use of plastic, increasing recycling opportunities and of course by getting existing plastics out of our oceans through terrific programs—for example, using Indigenous rangers to pull ghost nets out of the ocean.

We know that ghost nets are effectively industrial-sized killing machines, capturing dugongs, sharks, turtles and other machine creatures and drowning them.

Just on the reforms to plastic waste, the use of plastic in Australia has nearly doubled between 2010 and 2021. We went from 2.6 million tonnes of plastic—almost doubling the plastic that we're using. That's at a time when those opposite had set very ambitious targets on reducing plastic use but never achieved any of them. By reforming packaging regulation, we'll be able to reduce the use of plastic in the first place, and we'll also be able to make sure that, when we do use plastic, we choose the sorts of plastics that can be recycled more effectively—

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will just pause for a moment. Just hold your horses for a sec. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition has been interjecting constantly throughout this answer, non-stop. No-one else has been—constantly throughout this answer. I'm going to ask her to leave the chamber under 94(a).

Honourable members interjecting—

Order. The minister will return to the question.

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

Thank you, I will. We need to make sure that the use of plastic is reduced in the first place, by re-designing the sort of packaging that we're using. We need to use less problematic types of plastics so that we can more easily recycle any plastic we do use, with fewer problematic additives as well. We know a lot of packaging is covered, for example, in chemicals like PFAS, which means that it can't be effectively recycled. We're investing in recycling facilities together with the states and territories and the private sector, with a billion dollars extra invested in recycling capacity, which means a million extra tonnes can be recycled every year. That's the weight of 19 Harbour Bridges of rubbish that we are keeping out of landfill because of that investment. As well as being great for the environment, that's fantastic for jobs. There are three jobs in recycling for every one job in landfill.

Australia has joined the High Ambition Coalition to end plastic pollution. We've been working at the forefront of those treaty negotiations to make sure that our ambition here in Australia is reflected globally, with an ambitious— (Time expired)