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

This is a very special senators' statement for me today. I've just passed my sixth year in this place, officially. Nearly six years ago, as a new senator, I did my first 'senators' statements', as it was called—it's now a matter of public interest—on the growing threat of marine plastics, or plastics in our oceans. I understand it was the first speech that had ever been given in this place on the issue of plastic pollution in our oceans. When I gave that speech six years ago, the issue of marine plastic pollution was not yet seen by many people as a major environmental threat, but it was certainly something that I had been campaigning on for many years before I came into parliament. I mentioned two scientists at the time: Dr Jen Lavers and Dr Denise Hardesty, who were amongst a small group of scientists who had begun to sound the alarm about what was going on in our oceans. Since that time, through continued research and publications, the importance and urgency of this issue has become mainstream and has risen to be seen as one of the great environmental challenges of our time, globally. How quickly things are progressing gives me heart. I want to say here today that there is so much more we have to do and we need some real political leadership and action.

The oceans cover nearly 70 per cent of the earth's surface. Madam Acting Deputy President McCarthy, I remember your first speech in this place and how you reflected on the importance of oceans to your community. The oceans account for 99 per cent of all the habitable space for life on this planet. I understand why so many people simply assume that through their sheer size and majesty they are impregnable to our human actions—but they're not. Thanks to us, the oceans are fast becoming broken. If you want to see heartbreaking testimony to this, please watch a film called Albatross by filmmaker Chris Jordan. This is a very powerful and moving testimony to our increasingly broken relationship with nature. Through this movie, you travel to Midway Atoll and live with the albatrosses. Because albatrosses have no natural predators, the filmmaker was able to live with them. He spent eight years filming these beautiful birds. Every atom and every molecule in those birds has, over millions of years of evolution, come from subsisting on the ocean. Now, sadly, these birds are collecting plastic every time they fly out over the ocean to feed. They are feeding that to their chicks, and they are dying in their thousands. This is a story that is repeated for our shearwaters off the Tasmanian and east coast of Australia and for so many other marine species—turtles, whales and dolphins. It is a really serious issue, and the movie Albatross is a very powerful testimony. It is really important to frame up this issue and make people understand what we are doing. In fact, the filmmaker postulates that Midway is halfway between the two great continents in the Pacific Ocean and that, if we don't change the way we live, we're halfway to our own destruction as a species.

People don't understand that plastic pollution comes from our behaviour. Someone recently called it the 'detritus of humanity'. Plastic pollution is like the dandruff that the human species sheds into the environment as we get on with our daily lives. It's plastic bags, straws, chupa-chup holders—a whole range of things that make their way into the ocean as litter stream, break down and have very serious negative impacts.

I understand how difficult it is to imagine that something seemingly so small would have such a big impact on something as large as our oceans and essentially become an existential threat to the life and species on this planet. I'll give you two reasons why. We produce so much of the bloody stuff—the world produces 400 million tonnes of plastic every year—and around eight million tonnes is estimated to go into the ocean. That's expected to triple in the next 20 years. One recent study of microplastics—and of course all plastic ends up as microplastics, which is bits of plastic that are small enough to get into plankton—estimated that, as at 2014, there are 51 trillion pieces of microplastic in the ocean. We are finding it in plankton in Antarctica and all through our oceans. Our oceans are turning into plastic soup.

The message is that every little thing you can do helps to reduce plastic pollution, especially the way you live—reduce, refuse, reuse, redesign—but my message today is that it won't be enough to tackle this problem. We need hundreds of millions of people doing the same thing at the same time if we're actually going to beat this issue. That requires political action, not just here in Australia but globally. That's really what I want to talk to you about today.

Since I made my first speech on this in 2012 we have had a very successful Senate inquiry. Senator Urquhart is in here today. I thank her for her participation in that inquiry into marine plastics. We released a great report. It was groundbreaking—we were the first parliament in the world to do this. It was called Toxic tide. It raised a lot of eyebrows and got international media attention. I point out today that the government is yet to respond to that report that is over two years old.

But it has done a lot. It has crystallised a lot of action around this country. We've now seen, for example, container deposit schemes implemented in New South Wales, and they are close to being implemented in Queensland and Western Australia. We are seeing a gradual move towards banning microbeads and plastic bags, and other key recommendations. Yet the government is still asleep at the wheel on many of the key recommendations in that report.

I would also like to say today that the science around marine plastic in recent years has been driving this debate, but we need so much more of it. We need it to be properly funded. This was a key recommendation of the Senate report. The Greens have recommended having a cooperative research centre, with five years of government funding, that is backed by industry and stakeholders all around the world. Let's throw the kitchen sink at this problem. It's not just understanding the impacts of marine plastic; it's looking at research and development on the solutions that are necessary for this. That will need industry participation. For example, how do we phase out single-use plastics? That is what's coming around the corner. We desperately need this research to help inform the debate and, hopefully, find the best way to take action.

Since the speech six years ago, long-campaigning healthy ocean champions have had some powerful allies join their campaigns for healthy oceans. The Queen has recently come on board with this issue. She is a champion of healthy, clean oceans. Sir David Attenborough, with his Blue Planet series, has had a massive impact on this. Public attention has also grown through programs like the ABC's War on Waste. I'd like to make a special shout-out today to Stephen Oliver, the producer of that program, and his team—you've made a real difference in the Australian public's understanding and awareness of this issue. But the Australian government, on the other hand, hasn't. As with its approach to all major environmental issues, it has done virtually nothing to tackle plastic pollution.

We're currently having a Senate inquiry into the waste crisis in this country. I won't go into that yet. I'm chairing that inquiry. I'm optimistic that we'll get some really good recommendations to back up the Toxic tide report on how industry and all Australians can make a difference in this respect. But we need the government to immediately respond to the Senate report and we need a threat abatement plan because, under EPBC law, marine plastics are classified as a threatening process. That threat abatement plan has not yet been released by the government—another critical area where they've fallen short.

Look at what the rest of the world is doing. Only last week at their recent summit we had the G7 leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and European Union sign a healthy oceans plastic charter. We've had the UN Environment Assembly pass at their December 2017 Nairobi meeting a resolution to tackle plastic waste and marine litter. We've had the UK and the EU trying to outdo each other. Both leaders are having a war on waste. They're taking each other on as to who can reduce single-use plastics the most. Where is Australia? We have not responded to any of these international developments. Australia is a nation girt by sea. Australians love the ocean. Why aren't we a world leader in taking on this most critical of issues? We have the scientists, we have the technology and we have the vested interest in healthy oceans. I think most Australians would be on board with some strong action.

While plastic pollution needs local and international responses, I would like to raise here today that, if we really want to phase out single-use plastics and deal with the major issue that we have in our ocean pollution, we should look at a Montreal Protocol type agreement, which we know was successful in putting in the plan to phase out CFCs to save the ozone layer. We need to lead a collaborative international action, join the rest of the world and show leadership on this most critical of issues.