Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I ask the parliamentary secretary how satisfactory that is. He has no advice as to the impact of this legislation on waste oil recyclers. As I said in my speech in the second reading debate, they now collect 200 million litres of waste oil around the country, often in the remotest parts of Australia, from mining companies and farms across the board. This has increased as a result of the product stewardship for oil system, which has allowed waste oil recyclers grants for setting up collection sites, with stainless steel drums, as I understand. They made a very strong representation to the committee, saying that this would seriously diminish their chance of being able to market either the cleaned up or the re-refined oil. Surely the parliamentary secretary has an obligation to investigate those concerns and to give the Senate some answer as to whether they are warranted or not and whether we should be worried about them. If the parliamentary secretary did not consult with the waste oil sector, perhaps he can get some advice as to who did and what the results of that discussion might have been.