Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Ludwig is jealous. The government could do with all the extra pocket money it can get as well, Senator Ludwig. Whilst it is great for young people and it is a great incentive, what happens is that those cans and those bottles do not go into the kerbside collection. When they do not go into the kerbside collection there is a cost there in terms of the operation of that kerbside collection and there is a duplication of resources as well. Let us not forget that if we are incentivising people to be making separate drop-offs of recyclable goods, rather than going through the one kerbside collection scheme, there are other flow-on costs to having people divert their activities and their resources to do that when there is a far more efficient mechanism at work. All of these factors will have been considered in the BDA report. It is why it shows there is a net economic cost to this proposal and it is why it needs to be treated with due caution.

But I do encourage the Greens and welcome the fact that on this they are ensuring the discussion continues. They are holding the government to account in this area. As I said, it was a 2007 election promise of the government to look at a scheme like this. We are now in 2011, but we have not seen much progress. We have seen some of the modelling which I have referenced. We will now see a newly structured ministerial council, some of the members of which have indicated their openness and willingness to look at these issues. I hope we can address these issues. If this is not the way to go forward, I hope we can see the ministerial council outline alternative strategies for how we actually get the right product stewardship in place for all products of recyclable standard, including beverage containers. I hope we see the ministerial council progress that with industry to a point where we have appropriate standards and, importantly, we can ensure that we get the same types of recycling returns outside of residential households that we have managed to develop as a country inside residential households. The growth in residential recycling is something of which all Australians should be proud. Let us strive to get recycling done better throughout the rest of the community. I am not convinced as yet that this legislation is the way to do that, but we certainly look forward to seeing more discussion, more analysis and, importantly, more action in the next year or two to ensure that all of those areas that have potential are addressed and fixed.