Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and related bills, but I must also rise to speak about the protection of our lands and waters from waste. For our people, the connection we feel to country and waters can be difficult for settlers to understand. Our connection to country is about our identity as the First Peoples of this continent. Our connection to country and water is about the interdependent relationship between us, as people, and our ancestral lands, seas, oceans and rivers. As our old people continue to teach us, if we look after country, country will look after us. Our relationship with country is sustained by our cultural knowledge, our traditions and the wisdom of our old people. Not just are our people from country; we are of country. Unlike the settlers to this country, who felt that they could steal it, plant their colonial flags and claim these lands as their own, our people do not own the land; the land owns us. And that's why we look after it. Not to know our country and its stories, songs and songlines, its healing places and places of cultural significance causes our people pain. It impacts our health, wellbeing and identity. Our connection to country is our connection to our ancestors and their knowledge. It's this connection that allows our people to identify who they are, who their family are, who their mob are and who their ancestors, elders and totems are, and it guides our children on who they will be. This is why country must be protected from logging, from the mass extinction currently underway and from waste and pollution.

Our people never consented to our lands being taken or our oceans being choked with pollution. Before you fellas came, we cared for country for over 80,000 years. Today, 80 per cent of maritime debris in our waters is plastic rubbish. As a Gunnai Gunditjmara woman, both my countries have the most beautiful coastlines and beaches of anywhere in the world—not just best in the country but in the whole world. Places that are now called Ninety Mile Beach, the Tambo and Mitchell rivers, Lakes Entrance, Portland, Port Fairy and the beaches along the Great Ocean Road used to be pristine places that were abundant with food and shelter for our people. But studies have clearly shown that the majority of all plastic pollution found on the beaches in this country is produced and consumed locally. At the moment, we recycle only 16 per cent of plastic packaging; the rest ends up as waste or in rivers and oceans.

When I heard this government was introducing a waste reduction bill, I thought: 'Great! Surely the government will do the right thing and ban single-use plastics like the many plastic straws and plastic cutlery choking our waters.' Have you seen the story of the turtle that had a straw up its nose and the excruciating pain it went through to get that straw out of its nose? I thought: 'Of course they will reduce plastic packaging and introduce really strong measures to reduce the amount of plastic entering our oceans. Surely the government will mandate compostable recycling.' But, no, these bills do none of that, because the government don't want to do the right thing; they just want to look like they're doing something. I'm not at all surprised that a government led by the marketing department is pulling a marketing stunt. I hope that for Christmas this year the government get a little bit of shame as a present. When given the opportunity to introduce once-in-a-decade waste and recycling laws, they didn't even deal with plastic packaging. They tried; they just didn't try enough.

The federal Labor government introduced a nationwide plan in 2009 to build our local recycling industry and create a circular economy. None of those key policies have been acted on by this government. For the last three years they have presided over bushfires, climate change, mass extinction and a major waste crisis—

Debate interrupted.