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

We are getting there, Senator. We are making progress in lots of areas, as you will see, and we are going to progress the issue of waste collection. As I said, the RIS process is underway; it is out there. All of the interest groups—Senator Rhiannon talked about the councils—have an opportunity to participate in the process and are quite significantly doing so and coming forward with their responses to what has been provided. From a personal and a government point of view, I think it was disappointing that the Boomerang Alliance, one of whose proposals was the subject of examination under the RIS, decided—I think a little peremptorily—to resign and withdraw from the process. I think they would have better served the people they wish to represent by continuing to participate.

In the remaining minutes I have in this debate I would like to talk about the options that the COAG process has considered under the RIS process. Four key options were assessed for their costs and benefits for packaging waste and litter. The two key stakeholders, the Boomerang Alliance and the beverage industry, proposed specific options for the RIS to assess. Option No. 1 does not involve any new regulation. It is a strategy that would coordinate the actions of the jurisdictions and improve the use of the current infrastructure through increased knowledge, education and information sharing between the various interested parties. It seeks to increase recycling and reduce litter with minimal additional resources. The second option involves action under the coregulatory provisions of the Product Stewardship Act 2011. I referred earlier to the fact that we have already started the process of setting up national waste collection schemes under that act and will very shortly be rolling out some new proposals there. The RIS looked at three suboptions under the act, each one building on the other and involving the specification of higher levels of recycling and litter reduction. Like regulations made to establish the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme, regulations under the Product Stewardship Act would have the effects of: identifying liable parties, in this case companies in the packaging supply chain; requiring local parties to join an approved arrangement; and setting outcomes for an approved arrangement relating for example to packaging design, recovery, recycling and litter reduction.

Under the first suboption, option 2A, the current Australian Packaging Covenant would come under the Product Stewardship Act as a co-regulatory arrangement. As you may recall, Mr Deputy President, if you followed closely the debate about the product stewardship legislation, there are three systems under that legislation. I can see from your response there that you are fully on top of the legislation, and you would therefore know that there are three mechanisms under it: voluntary, co-regulatory and mandatory. The option I mentioned, option 2A, slots into the co-regulatory arrangement. The regulations would set outcomes at the level already identified for the Australian Packaging Covenant.

The second suboption, option 2B, is an industry-proposed packaging stewardship scheme. Under this option, in addition to the actions and outcomes from option 2A there would be a focus on key problem areas—in particular, beverage containers—and additional outcomes would be set out in regulation.

The third suboption, option 2C, is called the extended packaging stewardship scheme. This suboption involves a significant increase in the industry commitment relative to options 2A and 2B and would be set in the regulations. This third suboption involves the mandatory advanced disposal fee, whereby the government would place a fee on packaging materials which could be used for a range of actions to encourage the packaging of recycling and the reduction of litter. Importantly, the advanced disposal fee would have an impact on packaging at its source. It would influence both manu­facturers' choices of packaging and the choices of those who specify certain packaging for their products.

The fourth suboption again involves suboptions—in this case, two separate container deposit options. Both involve a 10c-per-container refund; however, they differ in the design and the configurations of the collection infrastructure. Option 4A is the option proposed under the umbrella of the environment group the Boomerang Alliance and is perhaps the option that most closely mirrors what Senator Ludlam is proposing in his bill. Under this option, there would be a diverse range of collection points, such as supercollectors, hubs, collection centres and reverse-vending machines, at which people could redeem their deposits. Option 4B is a hybrid container deposit scheme— (Time expired)