Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Environment Protection (Beverage Container Deposit and Recovery Scheme) Bill 2010 and to indicate that the government's position is not to support the legislation. It is not that I am not convinced that Senator Ludlam is very passionate about this issue, because I know he is and I have had a number of discussions with him about the topic. I know he is genuinely concerned with the issue of waste from containers and ways to deal with it. I will come more specifically to his bill and why the government, at this stage, is not indicating support for it.

First, I go back to a comment Senator Rhiannon made on this topic. She referred to the South Australian container deposit legislation. As a senator from South Australia, I am very familiar with that system and how it works. The current system, which the senator is using for comparative purposes, started in 1977. As a very young boy in South Australia I used to go to the football at Unley Oval with my father, who was a supporter of the SANFL Sturt Football Club. Back then—and I am talking now about the 1960s, Senator Rhiannon—we had a system in South Australia of collection and deposit. My father always chastised me because, rather than watching the football and following his team, I would wander around the oval and collect the bottles. I am pretty certain that back then they were Woodruff's bottles, and there was a 5c deposit even back then. Interestingly enough, I ultimately did not follow my father's team. My mother was a West Adelaide supporter, not a Sturt supporter, and she seemed to have greater influence on me, so I was not particularly interested when Sturt were playing.

The point of that little history lesson is that there is a significant difference between the bill from Senator Ludlam and how the system operates in South Australia. The system in South Australia is an industry-run scheme and what is being proposed by Senator Ludlam in this piece of legislation is a government-run scheme. There is quite a fundamental difference, and the Northern Territory legislation, which we have talked about, follows the South Australian pattern.

It is important to say at the outset that the reason we are opposing this legislation is not that we are not concerned about the issue of waste as a government, because we are. It is not because we do not have a plan to progress this issue, because, in fact, we do. As Senator Ludlam well knows, there is a process in place as we speak. It is not as if we have sat on our hands and done nothing about the issue. We have, in fact, progressed the issue and are continuing to progress the issue in what I think is a sensible sort of way.

As Senator Ludlam will know, last year we set up a national Product Stewardship Act for the first time. It was one of those pieces of legislation which ultimately got through this parliament with the support of all parties. The Greens were very helpful, particularly Senator Ludlam, but Senator Birmingham was also very actively involved in the legislation, particularly as it was going through the Senate. We were able to set up a national scheme for product stewardship, and some of the early benefits of that scheme are about to roll out very shortly for the collection of e-waste. I had the good fortune of being up in Bathurst a few weeks ago, and I saw some of what might end up being the way in which the e-waste is rolled out through the council in that town, which I understand is close to being underwater.

So it is not as if the government does not have any runs on the board for this issue, because we do. We have taken the issue of waste very seriously. We have taken it seriously by introducing that product stewardship legislation and, more particularly, we are in the process of rolling out a whole set of schemes which will ensure that we actively deal with this issue of waste. However, there are other processes that we need to go through. I know Senator Ludlum is young and keen and wants to progress this issue—