Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and cognate bills. I commend the government's commitment to stop shipping our unprocessed recyclable waste overseas. In the last reported financial year, Australia shipped over 4.44 megatonnes of waste overseas, with 15 per cent of this being unprocessed plastics, glass, paper and cardboard—that is, over 600,000 tonnes. Given the nature of the recent bans on recyclable waste, in particular by some of the largest waste importers including China, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and the Philippines, the issue of exporting waste is no longer a viable management strategy. Waste is a threat to our environment and none more so than waste from our renewable energy industry. I must admit that I did agree with Senator Rice's contribution to this debate, when she said that it should be mandatory for some companies to clean up their waste, none more so than waste from our renewable energy industry. Renewable energy companies, industries and advocates are notorious for hiding and minimising their environmental and human health impacts. They demand and receive exemptions from health and endangered species laws that apply to other industries. They make promises they cannot keep about being able to safely replace fossil fuels that now provide over 80 per cent of the world's global energy.

A few articles have noted some of the serious environmental, toxic, radioactive waste, human health and child labour issues inherent in mining rare earth and cobalt lithium deposits. However, we need quantitative studies—detailed rigorous, honest, transparent, cradle-to-the-grave, peer-reviewed analysis. It's been calculated that replacing 160,000 terawatts of global energy consumption with wind would require 183 million turbines needing roughly: 461 billion tonnes of steel for towers; 460 billion tonnes of steel and concrete for the foundations; 59 million tonnes of copper, steel and alloy for the turbines; 738 million tonnes of neodymium for turbine magnets; 14.7 billion tonnes of steel and complex composite materials for nacelles; and 11 billion tonnes of complex petroleum based composites for rotors and massive quantities of other raw materials. All of this must be mined, processed and manufactured into finished products and shipped around the world. Once the life of these products has ended, they then need to be either disposed of cleanly or recycled. Shipping just the iron ore to build the turbines would require nearly three million voyages in huge ships that would consume 13 billion tonnes of bunker fuel—heavy fuel, at that. Converting that ore to iron and steel would require 473 billion tonnes of coking coal, demanding another 1.2 million sea voyages consuming another six billion tonnes of bunker fuel. For sustainability disciples, does the earth have enough of these raw materials for this transformation?

It gets worse. These numbers do not include the ultra-long transmission lines required to carry electricity from windy locations to distant cities. As I mentioned last week, the cause of the 2009 bushfires was determined to be a fallen transmission line. If we're going to build more transmission lines, are we going to put them underground to reduce the risk of fire breaking out?

Wind turbines and solar panels last just 20 years or less, while coal, gas and nuclear power plants last up to 50 years and require far less land and raw materials. That means we would have to tear down, haul away and replace far more renewable generators twice as often, dispose of or recycle their composite parts and mine, process and ship more ores. Then there are the bird and bat species deaths, the wildlife losses from destroying habitats and the human health impacts from wind turbine noise and flicker. These also need to be examined, fully and honestly, along with the effects of skyrocketing renewable energy prices on every aspect of this transition and of our lives.

Solar panels are far more efficient at turning sunlight into heat than they are at turning sunlight into electricity. Solar panels produce more waste heat per watt than any other power source. In areas where there are large solar plants, temperatures can be as much as four degrees hotter than the surrounding land, forming heat islands. Pilots flying lower than 12,000 feet have been reported as feeling the rising hot air. Plants and animals are the enemy of solar and must be removed from solar plants. Since solar plants require vast amounts of land, usually only available in environmentally sensitive areas, wildlife is devastated. It's also worth pointing out that the CSIRO themselves have predicted that Australia's lithium battery waste could exceed over 100,000 tonnes in less than 20 years. Old lithium batteries are a fire risk and they are full of toxic heavy metals that have a limited life.

I should point out that the Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese, has been accusing this government of playing accounting tricks with the Paris Agreement. If there were ever an accounting trick, it's the fact that the cost of building all these renewables in other countries and the CO2 that's emitted in the production of these renewables aren't included in Australia's targets—and nor, might I add, is recycling or cleaning up these renewables. So, if you want to get serious about where the real accounting trick is, it's that all countries are either in Paris or they're not. What's happening is that a lot of these renewables are being manufactured in non-Paris-committed countries, and those carbon dioxide emissions aren't being included in the countries where that energy's being consumed. So I suggest that the Leader of the Opposition reflect on his comments about accounting tricks, because, if there are any, they arise from the way the Paris Agreement was structured to encourage renewables to be manufactured in countries that do not come under the agreement. Perhaps he might look at other countries rather than try to destroy our productive industries and destroy Australian jobs.

In relation to the existing recycling and collection methods and infrastructure, coupled with the recent international agreements relating to hazardous waste movement and plastic marine debris, as well as the development of foreign policy, current data suggests the export of recycled material would no longer be a cost-effective solution and would damage the economy and the environment in the near future. At the forefront of the heavy reliance on international agreements and policy is the 2018 introduction of restrictions on waste imports in China. In the 2017-18 financial year, China was the largest importer of Australian recyclable waste, importing over 1.3 million tonnes of waste. China's new restrictions have caused large-scale changes to the market, including reducing the price of scrap paper, which was once valued at $124 a tonne, by almost 100 per cent. The price of scrap plastic, once valued at $325 per tonne, has reduced by 78 per cent. The price of cardboard, once valued at $210 per tonne, has reduced by 40 per cent. With many other South-East Asian countries reaching capacity and considering new restrictions on recyclable material, it is vital that the government moves away from the export of waste and towards domestic recyclable waste management, as is proposed by this legislation. The export of recyclable waste is no longer a good investment. If nothing is done, it is likely that we will see the export of such waste being valued at less than worthless, leaving Australia with a waste problem that has no prior established solution.

However, this is not just an economic issue. I have no doubt that everyone in this chamber has seen footage of the plastic filled stomachs found in some of our marine birds, and countless images of marine species becoming trapped and strangled by plastic pollution. I guarantee everyone has seen footage of a turtle hopelessly stuck after consuming plastic pollution in the ocean. This is a moral issue and, more importantly, a strong environmental issue. Contrary to the belief of those opposite, I am actually an environmentalist. You will struggle to find someone with more love for our natural environment than me, which is why I spent seven years overseas in my early 20s, travelling around various countries, climbing the slopes of Kilimanjaro or Mont Blanc, diving in numerous countries, hiking in numerous countries, and being fascinated by what a wonderful and beautiful world we live in. One of the things I noticed is that, the poorer the country, the worse the waste problem was. That is why we should never destroy our economy to save the environment, because without a strong economy you will not save the environment. It's very important. Many countries just don't have freely available the things that we take for granted in Australia, like garbage bins, and, for that matter, sanitary facilities. I've been in many places in Third World countries where you get a bit of diarrhoea or something and you have to find a toilet. I can tell you it's something that you take for granted in this country, but in many other countries it is difficult to find. So we should always be ensuring that we protect our economy and keep waste to a minimum.

I believe that the reliable, affordable, emission-free energy that is contained within hydro power, hydrogen power and, of course, one of the world's most cleanest and most reliable sources of power, nuclear energy, is the path to the future. It's why I asked in estimates about chirped pulse amplification, which is a technology that has recently come to the fore. In 2018 a Nobel prize was given for work in this area. The technology involves a very strong, powerful laser beam being shone on a nucleus, the idea being that you shine it on the neutrons and try to flip one of the quarks to turn a neutron into a proton. That will reduce the lifespan of radioactive waste from nuclear energy by thousands of years, to about 30 years. If we could do that, that would be a huge step forward in being able to use nuclear energy as a clean, green method of energy, and eventually we're going to have to go there. One of these days, if we ever have to leave Planet Earth, we won't be leaving it with a wind-powered spaceship, I can assure you. There is no wind and not much light up there in space, so, if we ever have to find means to find other resources somewhere else, it's going to have to involve nuclear technology. The country that gets on top of that is going to be the country that leads on manufacturing and things like that, because nuclear energy, if used properly, will be the cheapest form of energy.

Waste management is crucial to keep Australia's environmental wonders wondrous. That is why, on behalf of the Australian government, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency announced that it is placing over $15 million of funding into 16 projects to help address the solar PV panel efficiency and end-of-life issues. I have always been a strong supporter of adequate strategies and research being used to investigate solar and battery waste, as can be seen by my submission on the EPBC Act. Given the potential environmental disaster solar waste disposal could cause through the leaching of hazardous materials such as lithium and lead, this research funding could not come too soon.

Contrary to what many have been made to believe by those opposite, the disposal of waste from materials such as solar panels and plastics poses one of the largest environmental threats to countless ecosystems around the world, our beloved Great Barrier Reef being the biggest one close to home. Forget theories based on fundamentally flawed BOM data and methods. Forget the potential negligible impact our farmers have on three per cent of inland reefs. Waste disposal is an environmental disaster that is affecting our marine ecosystems now and is only going to get worse, as solar and battery waste is expected to become a major contributor to national waste in the decades to come.

By banning unprocessed plastics, cardboard, paper and other recyclable material from being exported, we are creating a circular economy. The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 is simply the first of many reforms to our economy to make it better suited to the changing climate of foreign politics and to ensure the sustainable use of resources for our future generations. I commend the bill to the Senate.