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

I hope the government acts on this advice that we have before us from the Climate Change Authority. Remember two years ago, when we legislated a 43 per cent emissions reduction target, equivalent to a two-degree warming from preindustrial levels, significantly below the ambition of the Paris Agreement? The government kept saying: 'That's the floor. We intend to do a lot better. You watch. We're going to bring in policies and fund initiatives to reduce emissions across other sectoral pathways.' Well, here before us, in the Climate Change Authority report, we have a plan.

I wanted to highlight one of those pathways in particular, which is the circular economy. This is an issue that all Australians care about. It might be at home—what they put in their bin that goes kerbside. No-one wants to see a mountain of waste. Everybody wants to see more recycling. Everybody wants to see taken out of our waste stream problematic, single-use plastics that are made from petroleum. Everybody wants to see big producers of plastic pollution, big retailers of plastic pollution, like Coles and Woolies, and food manufacturers that use plastic take responsibility for the products that they sell and put out into the marketplace.

Have you noticed over the decades how the industry has really cleverly put it back onto consumers to 'do the right thing', 'put it in the bin' and go through kerbside recycling? Guess what? That's not working. Every day we get more and more waste—more and more waste going to landfill and more and more litter leaking into our rivers, our streams and our oceans. We've got plastic all through our food chain. We've got plastic all through our human bodies, including in our brains, according to the latest research. It should be—pardon the pun—a no-brainer to act on plastic pollution. And here we have the Climate Change Authority saying to us, 'Here is a pathway to build a circular economy.' But you know what? That's going to take a bit of courage. That's going to take a bit of leadership.

We have a Senate inquiry before us right now that's looking at where the government is at with building a circular economy. They've talked a big game since they came to government, saying that they were going to step in and regulate the packaging industry. Let's be honest; packaging is a big, big source of our problem. Did you know that plastic production just on its own is 45 per cent of the petrochemical sector around the world, which is projected to account for a third of the growth in oil demand by 2025? That's the demand for oil and gas exploration at one end, leading through to the production of plastic, with our rampant consumption of this kind of packaging. So we're supporting more oil and gas exploration, it's worse for the climate, it's increasing emissions, and we know what we can do about it—that is, actually tell these companies, 'You can't sell anything that can't be recycled, reused, composted or refused.'

Seriously, why are we letting these companies get away with producing so much rubbish that is just so damaging to our environment but also, as we're discussing here today, is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions? It's no wonder multinational oil and gas corporations are eyeing a rapid expansion in the production of plastics to generate the demand for fossil fuels in a decarbonised world. They will get away with it if we don't do something about it, and here before us is some advice for that sectoral pathway in the waste and recycling industry—what we need to do. So I'd ask senators to read the report.

It's our job to put pressure on the government to make sure we lift our ambitions in this place. A 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2035 is not ambitious. It was sold to us at the time by the government as being a start, and I have yet to see the action in other sectors to reduce emissions. We know the most recent data on emissions is that they are continuing to rise here in Australia. Meanwhile, the planet continues to warm, and we don't take the action that is necessary. Is that because we refuse to stand up to big corporations? Yes, it is. On this particular issue with waste, Australians want to see action. No matter what their political colour, no matter where they live, they want us to do the right thing and build a circular economy.