Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Sinodinos, as someone who has worked in the World Trade Centre complex, I find your words today very disturbing, as would all my Green colleagues, and I am sure they will be addressed in good time. I would like to see this chamber rise above that sort of debate and constructively use the time we have got here to raise real matters of public interest.

I would like to talk today about something that has been very dear to my heart and is an issue which all Australians from all political colours, no matter what party they support, would also agree on—and that is the issue of plastics in our marine environment. Recently I was up in the Great Barrier Reef with my family and within 20 metres either side of our towels my children and I found 46 plastic bottle caps. We also collected a whole bag of rubbish. Then we went to the guard on duty and said, 'Does anyone clean these beaches in the morning?' And he said: 'We clean them every morning. But it doesn't matter what we do, by the next morning the beach is absolutely covered in plastic.' That is just one island in the middle of the Pacific.

Marine plastics is one of the single biggest marine pollution issues in the world. For 40 years now various conventions right around the world, including cooperation amongst all countries, have tried to address this problem, but the problem is only getting worse. I would like to read you some basic statistics on the amount of plastics in the ocean. The amount of plastic produced from 2000 to 2010 exceeded in those 10 years the amount produced during the entire last century. Plastic is the most common type of marine litter found worldwide. An estimated 100,000 marine mammals and up to one million seabirds die every year after ingesting or being tangled in plastic marine litter. Up to 80 per cent of plastic in our oceans comes from land based sources. Plastics comprise up to 90 per cent of all floating marine debris. Plastics do not biodegrade but instead breakdown in what is called photodegrading into small particles that persist in the ocean, absorb toxins and enter our food chain through fish, seabirds and other marine life.

I have a report here by Dr Jen Lavers from CSIRO in Tasmania looking particularly at short-tailed shearwaters, a species of seabird endemic to Tasmania. The conclusion of her research and others is that the ingestion of plastic was first reported in 1984 in these birds. Studies following that reported the frequency of plastic ingestion—that is the proportion of these seabirds with plastic inside—to be around 85 per cent. However, recent comprehensive scientific studies in 2011 show the proportion of the population is now 100 per cent. So every bird tested has plastic in its body. We have also found plastic now inside plankton—the bottom of the food chain. Plastic is all through our ocean. It is probably not unreasonable to say that certainly parts of the ocean, such as the North Pacific Gyre, have turned into a plastic soup.

I want to focus on the issue of land based sources of plastic. Recently on Catalyst Dr Britta Denise Hardesty from CSIRO said:

Observationally we do not find full plastic bottles or cans or glass bottles in, in South Australia and I would likely attribute that to the, to the container deposit scheme that they have there. The waste that's associated with the beverage industry comprises about a third and some estimates are as high as a half of the marine debris that we find globally. So that's bottles and cans and straws and disposal coffee cups, bring your to go cup with you.

People ask, 'How do we solve this marine plastics problem?' It is not going to be solved very easily. The place to start is in raising awareness through education and through action that this is actually a serious issue. For years I have been involved with volunteer organisations in cleaning beaches right around the country. I have also been fortunate enough to visit Tasmania's remote south-west where, with four fishing boats, we removed 4½ tonnes of marine plastic off three beaches. That occurs every year through the hard work of some Tasmanians, such as Matthew Dell.

What can we do as parliamentarians? It is our role—and I see it as a duty—to look at effective policy prescriptions for such a problem. One thing that has been talked about for years without any action is a container deposit scheme. Recently I was given a touch-up on A Current Affair by the Australian Food and Grocery Council—a lady called Jenny Pickles, in particular, who was criticising the Greens for wanting to bring in a 'great big new plastic tax'. We have heard that line before. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to respond in kind, but I would have pointed out that it is actually a deposit scheme that the majority of Australians support. It is not a tax; it is simply a payment or an incentive for people to do the right thing, and that is: return rubbish to be effectively recycled.

It is implemented in South Australia, where, as I mentioned earlier, the evidence shows that it has helped to reduce marine debris, which is a serious problem in our ecosystems, and it is operational in the Northern Territory. Why isn't it operational in other parts of the country and, indeed, other countries around the world? I get asked this question all the time: if this scheme works and it does help reduce the amount of litter and debris, why hasn't it been implemented?

The key reason goes back to Jenny Pickles and her group the Australian Food and Grocery Council. The leader of the pack of companies lobbying to prevent container deposit legislation is none other than Coca-Cola, with a number of other beverage companies. Through various means Coke—not just in Australia, but also internationally—have had the funds to run a very effective lobbying campaign to prevent them having to put their hands in their pockets to help clean up what is fast becoming, or is already, a major global pollution problem and a threat to marine life.

The Boomerang Alliance claim that this is purely ideological—Coca-Cola is a company that does not like being told what to do; they believe in a free market, not government regulations. I have a lot of specific examples of exactly the lengths that Coca-Cola and other companies in the packaging industry in Australia have gone to to prevent things such as container deposit legislation. As an example, during the state parliamentary debate on introducing CDL into the Northern Territory in February this year, Coke and its allies mounted an expensive media advertising and political campaign against the legislation. Coke was eventually accused by the NT Chief Minister of running a 'misleading' public campaign and told to desist from their 'lies'. Coke is now threatening to take legal action against the Northern Territory government. I will give another example: during 2005, the then WA Labor government considered introducing a container deposit scheme. The government pulled back due to reported threats of Coke running a marginal seat campaign against the party. This meant campaigning against sitting Labor Party MPs in electorates where the race was tight, thereby threatening the Labor government with the loss of power.

But this is not just something specific to beverage companies. There is an enormous amount of literature on lobbying campaigns in places like the US against the introduction of things such as plastic bag bans. I would like to put on record that I use plastic. Plastic is probably one of the best inventions of the last century in terms of the benefits it has brought to our society and those benefits are undoubtedly immense; however, only human beings can produce a product that nature cannot recycle—and that product is plastic. For our own benefit we have created a monster. It makes a lot of sense that, given our capacity and intelligence as a species, we now look at what we can do to reduce plastic production and invest in schemes, incentives and technologies to replace plastic—especially single-use plastics.

Going back to public education and what people can do to help as to the problem of plastics in the ocean, we can re-use, recycle and reduce—especially the use of single-use plastics which are everywhere in our supermarkets; we can also volunteer to get involved with local community groups in beach clean-ups and remove debris from beaches. That is one of the big advantages of container deposit legislation. This idea that producer responsibility is unfair on producers flies in the face of the classic economics that producers should be responsible for the externalities of their products. The beauty of CDL is that it includes consumer responsibility and puts the onus on consumers to return bottles and take action. So, apart from cleaning beaches and getting involved in local campaigns to recycle plastics, CDL forces both consumers and companies to do the right thing. This is something that Australia could show some significant international leadership on.

The whole movement towards educating the public on global plastics has, as I mentioned, been in train for nearly 40 or 50 years—since we started discovering plastics turning up in our ocean. The South Pacific Gyre, where probes down to 200 metres under the surface have discovered solid plastics in the ocean, was discovered by Captain Charles Moore, a Coast Guard captain from the US. He has been given an honorary doctorate and is arriving in Australia next week. He is now dedicating his life to educating the world on marine plastics and the dangers that marine plastics pose to our ecosystem. He will be going on a public speaking circuit around the country next week and the following week, and will then be going around the world. In conjunction with his talks on the dangers of marine plastics and how we can combat this problem will be the showing of a movie called Trashedthe first global documentary to highlight the issue of marine plastics in our environment. To quote Charlie Moore, if I may call him that:

…the world must be convinced to cease using its oceans as the final resting place for its waste…

The Plastic Pollution Conversation, which is the name of his global tour, 'must continue with an even louder voice,' says Moore. His media release continues:

His vision is to increase the volume of that voice in a fundamental rethinking of the plastic age and the associated growing global health crisis.

Education and awareness is going to be very important but we have a special ability in both federal and state parliament to implement a policy scheme that can begin to address such frightening facts as that, for example, a third of all plastics in the ocean—which break down into millions of pieces all the way down the food chain to plankton—is from beverage containers.

Tangaroa Blue is a fully-funded government body that is doing a lot more data research on marine plastics and, as our database increases, we get a much better understanding of just what types of plastics we have in the ocean and what the sources of those plastics are. That work will continue as well. I urge fellow senators to take an interest in this subject because it is going to become a very important issue in the future.