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

I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the response by the Premier of South Australia, Mr Weatherill.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I want to comment this afternoon on the response from the Premier of South Australia, Mr Weatherill, to the Senate resolution exempting the Northern Territory government from the Mutual Recognition Act to allow it to continue with its recycling refund scheme. It does not surprise me that South Australia is the first government to officially write back to the Senate to acknowledge the correspondence sent to it in relation to the motion that was passed by the Senate calling on all MPs around the country to take action to exempt the Northern Territory from the Mutual Recognition Act. This is a legal loophole that was exploited by Coca-Cola to overthrow the recycling scheme in the Northern Territory and thus take away the autonomy of a sovereign government in terms of how it chooses to recycle plastic bottles, glass bottles, cans and milk containers.

It does not surprise me that South Australia responded so quickly, because to me, having visited the state last year and noting the Senate inquiry into container deposit schemes in South Australia, it is very obvious that nearly every South Australian I meet is very proud of their scheme and actually very happy to export that scheme to the rest of the country. It has been very successful over a long period of time in achieving higher recycling rates of over 80 per cent. I think a lesson can be learnt from South Australia by the rest of the nation.

Recently, we had a visitation here in Parliament House by a group of six businesses, four of them international businesses, looking to invest in a national container deposit scheme. While the benefits of recycling to communities and the environment are well known, in terms of container deposit schemes in South Australia, probably what is not well understood in this country and which will become very clear are the economic benefits this can bring and the fact that it will be funded by private investment. These companies came to discuss the fact that they would invest $500 million in a national scheme and felt that they could create between 3,000 and 3,500 new jobs in recycling, with up to 1,400 depots and 250 super-depots around the country. These depots would not just be set up to take back containers such as cans; they would also be set up to take on other forms of waste such as e-waste which, of course, is probably the biggest waste challenge facing this country at the moment. They would also be well set up to take on batteries, tyres and other forms of waste. So this is essentially a story about infrastructure development in this country—an infrastructure development set up to solve a problem.

I have talked in the Senate frequently in the last eight to nine months on the problems with marine plastics. Recently, I attended a forum in Hobart where CSIRO scientists uncovered the first analysis that they had done on the data that had been provided to them by Keep Australia Beautiful in relation to the numbers of containers found around the country at a number of different sites, not just on beaches but also in terrestrial environments. These CSIRO scientists are also doing a systematic study of beaches around the entire country. They probably have one of the best jobs in the country: they are basically paid to go, 100 kilometres apart, to every beach around the nation and collect information. Their data was very clear: that outside of South Australia you are four times more likely to find plastic bottles, cans and glass bottles than you are in South Australia, including on beaches.

Plastics in the ocean is probably the single biggest pollution issue around the globe at the moment facing our marine environment. Recently, we have seen a big step up in campaigns by environment groups to start highlighting just how serious this problem is.

Plastic bottles are only part of the problem—I acknowledge that—but we know, from data that we have seen from Clean Up Australia Day and Keep Australia Beautiful and the data that has been put together by CSIRO, that plastic bottles make up a large proportion of the plastics that we find on our beaches. So it is a good place to start.

Putting in place a product stewardship scheme that helps reduce plastic and other forms of packaging is a really sensible policy. It is not just sensible in terms of the environmental benefits that it brings. We also know that these schemes can create jobs; they can create investment; they can help us with other types of recycling. But we also know that they are highly efficient and that they work, which is very difficult to say for other proposed schemes that are in front of COAG at the moment.

I will finish in just a minute. Firstly, I will just say that COAG still has not decided yet on whether we are going to have a national container deposit scheme. We anticipate that we will get that decision following their announcement that they will not be delaying or deferring the decision, which they have done for the last three years, and that we will be getting that decision very shortly.

Obviously it pays to be an optimist in this game, but I am optimistic, after three years of hard lobbying by the environment movement and in fact over 20 years of pushing for a national scheme, that we may actually see this occur. Interestingly enough, if we do not get a national scheme because we have some states that choose not to be part of that scheme, then we have a situation facing us at the moment where we have a series of Liberal and Labor governments around the country who have indicated support for this scheme at a state level. Certainly, recently the Liberal Victorian Premier has indicated his support for a scheme. Tasmania has passed a tripartisan motion in parliament, with all three parties supporting a state based scheme. We are hearing very positive messages out of Western Australia, where they of course have a local government council scheme in place already, and of course we have South Australia and the Northern Territory operating, which leaves Queensland who are saying that they are happy to go with the bin network to be funded by Coca-Cola and the Food and Grocery Council. That leaves us with New South Wales.

So we have a very interesting situation here—that, because of the mutual recognition exemption that is demonstrated in this letter from South Australia today, we have the potential to have six or seven different state-based schemes. Considering that those in industry like to participate in these schemes, I think it will be a nightmare for them if we do not have a national scheme. But there is the will, there is the organic momentum behind this scheme, in most of the states in this country, to have an efficient, affordable and effective container deposit scheme which will help us to recycle and which adds grunt to our recycling in this country. It is going to be very interesting to see which way that penny will land, and hopefully we will know that in the next few weeks.

Question agreed to.