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

I really am glad to be rising to speak on this bill that the government calls the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020. But the simple problem is that it does very little to reduce waste in Australia and it doesn't give the recycling industry the certainty they need to invest in a circular economy and move this country out of the waste crisis that we have been in since China soared in 2017. We have a historic opportunity with this bill to not only fix this waste crisis, create tens of thousands of new green jobs in a green industry, in recycling, and solve an environmental problem but also do a solid for our oceans and our community.

This is very important to me personally. For nearly 15 years, I've been campaigning on trying to stop plastic going into the ocean. Nearly half of that time has been in this building, in parliament. In my first speech, I talked about this issue and some of the fantastic people in the community and in the environment movement I've been working with to tackle this problem. My first senator's statement was about tackling marine debris. I feel very privileged to have had the platform as a senator with a fantastic committee system and the cooperation across political parties to have initiated and chaired two Senate inquiries into marine plastic and into the plastic waste crisis we find ourselves in. This was the world's first parliament to do so. We were the first parliament to inquire into this most pervasive and enormous environmental problem and how we were going to get our way out of this waste crisis, because we've been so lazy by exporting our contaminated waste to the rest of the world for so long. We came up with a series of very good recommendations.

So this is important to me. I know it's extremely important to my party—that is, my colleagues, who are going to make fantastic contributions to this debate; to Greens state MPs; to dozens of fantastic local government representatives for the Greens around the country; the supporters; and the environment movement. If I were to name the good people that I have campaigned shoulder to shoulder with on this for the last 15 years, my entire speech would be taken up by naming them, but I will try and get their names on record at some stage soon.

But here's the really interesting thing. I was really surprised—and I must say pleasantly surprised; you'd have to forgive me for being a little bit cynical—when the Prime Minister mentioned at a press conference that his daughter had raised this issue with him and that he was going to tackle this problem. I was even more surprised when he made it the keynote part of his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2019. Of course, I'd like to have seen him talking about Australia taking a leadership role in climate change, but I wasn't going to complain that a prime minister of this country was telling the world that Australia was going to lead on this issue of tackling marine plastics—the toxic tide, the scourge of plastics in our ocean. And I understand it was something he discussed with US President-elect, soon to be President, Joe Biden; it was one of the issues they discussed on the telephone.

The problem is that this bill, the way it is written, doesn't act on plastics in the ocean because it deliberately excludes plastic packaging, the key source of marine plastics. Yes, of course it is a global problem on a massive scale. As we speak now, thousands of tonnes of mostly single-use plastics are making their way into the ocean. It's been estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. We're finding microplastics in plankton in the Antarctic. It's all through our seafood chain. Yet what do we do about it? If you came to someone who understood this issue and said: 'How are we going to take action to reduce plastics in the ocean? What's the single most important thing you would do?' They would say: 'Ban the single-use plastics that are causing so much problem. Reduce our consumption and production of plastics that are almost impossible to recycle and that form so much of the litter and the trash that does so much damage to our precious marine life.' So the first thing you'd do is ban those plastics. But guess what? There's nothing in here to ban plastics. There's nothing in here to hold accountable the big producers of plastic—some of the most profitable companies in Australia and internationally—and the retailers of plastic products, like the big supermarket chains. There's nothing in here to mandate strong targets for those companies. That's the second thing you would do; you would say, 'If plastic packaging is the problem, let's try and reduce as much as we can of the stuff that we just don't need.'

By the way, everybody agrees, including the Australian Packaging Covenant, that we need to get rid of problematic single-use plastics. But where's the action on it? I'll tell you where it is: it's in the states and it's in the territories. They're going their own way because we've failed to show national leadership on this issue. The Senate Environment and Communications Committee recommended a ban on single-use plastics in 2017. It's not even included in the government's threat abatement plan for marine debris. Guess when marine plastic was declared a threatening process under federal environmental laws? In 2003! Nearly 20 years later we still haven't tackled the key source of plastic that's doing so much damage. But today, next week, this chamber and this parliament can do that. I expect we will do that, and that's what the Australian people expect of all of us. There's no more time for being cute and no more time for technicalities, excuses or wriggle room. Let's do it!

I'll talk in more detail about the Greens' amendments and other amendments when we get to the committee stage. They've been circulated now for over a month. We've had discussions with all political parties and all Independents about this issue. We can create Aussie jobs. Banning the export of waste, okay, was probably not the way I thought the government was going to go but, given the waste crisis we find ourselves in, if we ban the export of waste such as plastics, it does put it back on us to do something about it. It forces us to deal with this problem. If we go down the right path—and what we do in the Senate will dictate that—and build a circular economy then we will create Australian jobs, and not just in the big cities but also in rural and remote Australia. We will see massive upgrades in technology and infrastructure from the recycling industry. The recycling industry want to fix this problem, but they need policy certainty, and I'll go into that in more detail when we get to the Greens amendment on mandatory product stewardship schemes.

I can't stress how important it is that we get this right. This is the first piece of legislation on waste that this parliament has seen in nearly a decade—I would say nearly two decades. I do acknowledge what Senator McAllister said earlier about Labor's contribution around product stewardship schemes. The architecture is already there. If anything, the second part of this bill, which is rewriting product stewardship schemes, really just fiddles around the edges. It has some added benefits and measures that we support, but it doesn't get to the root cause of the problem. But, as I said, I am convinced that we will do so today and next week, when we vote on this.

I put up a private member's bill over 18 months ago to ban single-use plastics, to copy the European Parliament. I had been genuinely disappointed that the European Parliament beat us to the punch. They were the first parliament in the world to ban single-use plastics—although this chamber, this Senate, was the first to have a parliamentary inquiry into the problem. The Europeans beat us and banned single-use plastics, so I put up a bill that was going to do that. I also put up a private member's bill that was going to take the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation's voluntary targets for plastic and other packaging and mandate those, to put them into law—to take Labor's existing architecture and legislation and mandate it. I believe APCO when they tell me they are different from what they used to be. In 2005 APCO set themselves some targets for 2010 to achieve a 30 per cent recycling rate in this country. Ten years later, does anybody know what it is? It's 16 per cent. After 15 years we're recycling only 16 per cent of the plastic we consume in this country.

The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation, which is predominantly made up of big packaging companies and retailers, have had these voluntary targets that they have never come close to meeting, and they've never been held to account. It's time for that to end. The recycling industry employs nearly 60,000 Australians, and it could be tens of thousands more if we had a full circular economy. If we back the recycling industry and give them the policy certainty they are asking for—and they support the amendments that will be before the Senate—we can actually create a circular economy with tens of thousands of jobs and solve an environmental problem.

There are four key stakeholders in this debate: the recycling industry; the packaging and retailing industry; local governments, who do a lot of the kerbside recycling; and community and environment groups. When my bill went to the Senate's environment committee we took extensive evidence, and three of those stakeholders supported the amendments that will be before the Senate. Local governments supported mandatory product stewardship schemes banning single-use plastics. Environment and community groups unanimously cheered on mandatory product stewardship schemes—government putting packaging targets into law and banning single-use plastics. Three out of the four supported it—no surprises as to who didn't support it: the packaging industry.

Now, in saying that, I'll be really clear: APCO said that they were agnostic as to what kind of structure they were put under. And the big retailers, like Woolworths and the Food and Grocery Council—which deals with a lot of the APCO members; I was on a really good hook-up with the CEO of Amcor—all said that they were going to meet their 2025 voluntary targets. They're confident that they're going to meet them, so why would they have a problem with the Senate mandating them in law? You can talk the talk; walk the walk. It's easy enough.

When we get to the committee stage we'll be able to talk in more detail about why banning single-use plastics is important—why taking voluntary schemes and mandating them, giving the recycling industry the confidence it needs, is so important if we want to fix this problem. In a truly circular economy, waste doesn't exist. Rubbish doesn't exist—the term doesn't exist—because everything has value. Everything is created for its end of life. It doesn't end up in the ocean and it doesn't end up in landfill. It ends up being reused and creating Australian jobs.