Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

A year and a half ago I found myself on another one of my North Queensland trips to speak with a company that has developed a method of recycling farm plastics, which are often used for crops like tomatoes, strawberries and melons. For those of you who aren't familiar with farming, at the end of every season the crops are cut back and thousands of kilometres of this black plastic is ripped up and rolled into giant balls that were once upon a time dumped into landfill. This happened on thousands of farms across Australia each year, so you can only imagine how much plastic was ending up in the ground. Once the dumping practice ended, farms were just storing unmeasurable numbers of these plastic bales, which were a ticking time bomb for firebugs and environmental damage on prime agricultural land.

You might ask why this plastic wasn't being recycled in the first place. The problem farmers faced was that, when they'd ripped the plastic up from the moist soil below, dirt would stick to the plastic. The dirt was enough to contaminate the recycling process, so therefore the bales of plastic would just get stored in the corner of a farm. But along came this young bloke, Cory Towner, who was young achiever of the year for showing us that the device he'd developed not just ripped up the black plastic but removed the soil and green matter. His biggest impediment was that he couldn't find the financial support to build these devices on a commercial scale. I was so impressed by what he'd developed that I helped him by becoming an ambassador for his company. I'm not sure too many other senators in this parliament have put their money where their mouths are when it comes to recycling. It would be interesting to ask the Greens how many of them own shares or an interest in a recycling company.

Let's face it, we all have a responsibility to deal with rubbish and recycling in this country, but we'd have a whole lot less to deal with if we weren't buying in cheap goods from countries like China. My generation and older, as well as those who are probably in their early to mid 40s know what recycling is about. My father's garage had shelves of re-used pickle jars full of screws and God knows what else he kept in there. He was the kind of man who could fix just about anything around the house. The other side of the coin was that our pantry had glass jars repurposed for jams that Mum would make out of fruit we grew in the backyard. We'd take the glass soft-drink bottles back to the store for a credit or refund, or donate them to the local Scouts group. We drank from a tap when we were thirsty; we didn't buy water in plastic bottles. When we went for weekend drives, we put boiled water in a flask and made our coffee or tea in the old enamel cups, not throwaway takeaway cups. And we bought quality. We bought Australian made appliances for the house, not this cheap crap we see on the shelves that lasts 12 months if you're lucky.

This Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 talks about the action plan aimed at driving change in industry, business, governments and the community to turn waste into reusable commodities. I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything useful to do with a $7.50 Kmart toaster that breaks, or burns someone's house down. Nor can I see how a $9 BigW sandwich maker can be turned into a re-usable commodity. These are just two examples of the cheap rubbish we are being sold in stores across Australia. Most of these dead household items just end up in landfill. We bury it—out of sight, out of mind. Let's face it, there's very little worth in keeping a cheap $7.50 cordless kettle from Kmart.

This bill states that it intends to regulate the export of waste material 'which is likely to have a negative impact on the environment or human health in the receiving country'. But where's the regulation to stop the importation of cheap material that is likely to harm the environment or human health in our country—in Australia? As far as I'm concerned, the bulk of what we're sending back is their rubbish sent here to begin with. Take solar panels, for example. Here in Australia we can't do a single thing with dead cells. We're burying them, and all of that cadmium, lead and other toxic chemicals eventually leach into the soil and into waterways. The same goes for other renewable energy sources, like wind turbines. So you're screaming out for more solar panels and more wind turbines in the country, but no-one's told me how you intend to get rid of them. What are we going to do with them?

Some of the Greens might find this difficult to comprehend, but I've been working with the Turnbull and Morrison governments for about three years to enable the world's first commercial recycling plant for asbestos. Asbestos is one of the most deadly materials that a dump and a community will deal with not only in this country but right across the globe. This thermochemical plant that I've taken to the government has been approved by environmental agencies in the United States and the European Union, but not here in Australia.

The Australian company EnviroMaster is being held up by a second feasibility study because of bureaucracy and government departments. They've been forced to undertake two feasibility studies worth more than $12 million. It's the usual red tape we hear about that's helping to continue the trend of digging giant holes and burying thousands of tonnes of this deadly material each week—and this is happening every single day in suburban areas, like my old home town of Ipswich. You heard it here first: Australia has a way of recycling asbestos. But we continue to bury it as best practice, which, as it stands, has an eternal legacy. We can thank federal and state government bureaucrats who feel the need to stifle this new technology, which has already been approved in the United States and Europe. If I knew the names of these bureaucrats I'd name them here, because they're doing a great job proving to taxpayers why they hate dealing with government departments.

Australia could do much more recycling if—I emphasise 'if' for a reason—it had cheaper energy. But because we're not prepared to build more coal-fired power stations we've been forced to send glass and other recycled products overseas, where energy costs are at least half that of Australia's. Again, these bills are just a part of the solution to better recycling here in Australia. Both Senator Roberts and I will be supporting the legislation.