Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on the Product Stewardship Bill 2011. This bill establishes a national framework to support voluntary co-regulatory and regulatory product stewardship and extended producer responsibility schemes to provide for the impacts of a product being responsibly managed both during and at the end of its life cycle. Through these measure it is hoped, including on this side of the chamber, that the environmental, health and safety impacts of products, particularly those impacts associated with the disposal of products, will be more effectively managed.

The commitment to establish this national framework, underpinned by the legislation before us today, was made by the govern­ment in its November 2009 National Waste Policy: Less Waste, More Resources statement. This National Waste Policy has been endorsed by all Australian governments at state and territory level, through both the Environmental Protection and Heritage Council at the time, in November 2009, and COAG in August 2010.

The coalition fully supports the principle of product stewardship being, as it is outlined in the National Waste Policy:

… the shared responsibility for reducing the environmental, health and safety footprint of manufactured goods and materials across the life cycle of a product.

The bill itself offers a subtly different definition from the National Waste Policy, namely that it is:

… an approach to reducing the environmental and other impacts of products by encouraging or requiring manufacturers, importers, distributors and other persons to take responsibility for those products.

I know this has been a long work in progress and work that has involved certain sectors of industry along the way. I am well aware that some sectors of industry are particularly enthusiastic to see this legislation passed. I especially note the national TV and computer sectors, who have a proposed national TV and computer product steward­ship program that we would expect, from the advice that both industry and government gave us during the negotiation phase, to be one of the first out of the starting blocks. This program already has members representing 70 per cent of total imports of computer brands into Australia and 80 per cent of sales in Australia. The TV and computer scheme obviously is of particular importance as we move through the phases of the switch over from analog to digital signals and because of the increased volume of the already significant supply of electronic waste that those industries will generate.

Importantly, the coalition is particularly supportive of the bill providing for voluntary product stewardship schemes, as set out in part 2 of the bill. These sit alongside the requirements and opportunities for co-regulatory and mandatory product stewardship schemes outlined in the bill. Part 2 of the bill establishes a mechanism to encourage and recognise product steward­ship without the need to regulate and also to provide assurance to the community that any voluntary product stewardship scheme is operating to achieve its stated outcomes, and it authorises the use of product stewardship logos in connection with these arrangements.

The Global Product Stewardship Council, an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to understanding and advancing the principles of product stewardship, says that in its experience, as reinforced by overseas participants in the International Product Stewardship Summit, Australia has had greater success with voluntary programs than many overseas jurisdictions have. It also says:

Stakeholders are more likely to collaborate on and effectively implement voluntary and/or regulatory approaches than where approaches are in unilaterally mandated.

And that:

Approaches requiring greater levels of regulation should be pursued only after market-based, voluntary and co-regulatory approaches have been clearly shown to be relatively ineffective in achieving desired outcomes.

These are principles that the coalition would support and would urge and expect the government to keep in mind during its application of the powers that this legislation provides for. We do expect that where industries are able to deliver effective voluntary schemes then that is exactly what all sides of politics in this country would like to see.

The peak body for Australia's lighting industry, Lighting Council Australia, have several months experience in administering their own voluntary product stewardship scheme. They say:

The industry ownership bestowed by a voluntary or co-regulatory approach should lead to better outcomes among industries prepared to assume such responsibility. To reduce costs on both industry and government, all efforts should be made to encourage voluntary rather than regulatory approaches.

However, this bill does provide for all three—voluntary, co-regulatory and mandatory—schemes. There is a place for all three, particularly in terms of the capacity to bring in recalcitrant parts of industries to ensure that the bill has a universal effect. Under the bill, accreditation of voluntary schemes will be on a cost-recovery basis through a fee for service.

I will spend a moment addressing some of the concerns that have been highlighted during consideration of this legislation. A Senate inquiry was held, as is customary, and I thank those who participated in that inquiry: the witnesses; the committee staff, as always, for their detailed report; and my colleague Senator Fisher, who engaged particularly effectively in this inquiry to examine some of the issues and concerns that industry and other groups had. We heard a range of concerns, some of them relating to the consultation approach, some of them relating to the expected effectiveness of the scheme and some of them relating to the potential for industry to be roped in or surprised by its inclusion in the scheme.

In many ways, we heard extreme views—from those who feared that all industries may suddenly find themselves subject to a mandatory scheme, at one extreme, and those who believed that the legislation was ineffectual and would achieve absolutely nothing at the other extreme. Those two extremes perhaps suggest that there is a middle way, and the legislation maybe has found that middle way. Nonetheless there were specific concerns raised about a range of factors, in particular concerns about the criteria as well as industry concerns about an element of surprise that theoretically could exist for industries to be roped in under the scheme.

I am very pleased that we have been able to work through this legislation and issues such as the criteria. A range of amendments standing in the name of the government, the Greens and the opposition have been circulated in the chamber. These have been worked on in a collaborative manner. I thank Senator Ludlam and Senator Farrell for their work, as well as the officers of the department who have worked with Senator Farrell and all parties to ensure that we can come up with some sensible amendments that we hope go some way to appeasing some of the concerns. Importantly, the amendments that will be moved will provide for a new definition of the product stewardship criteria—a definition that is, I think, less open-ended than the definition provided for in the bill as it stands and that ensures that criteria, though I suspect still relatively easy to meet for industries that genuinely should be included in such a scheme, are at least a bit more of a hurdle to ensure that you could not come up with a scenario where almost any product of any industry could fit or meet the criteria as they were previously drafted.

We have also put in place some provisions that will ensure that there is a degree of forewarning about products that the government is looking at or considering. So the government will, under the amendments proposed, be publishing lists of products being considered for accreditation or regulation under the act. There will be a committee established—a review mech­anism—to ensure that industry and key players in this sector all have some degree of input. These are important changes that we believe will provide at least for a greater level of involvement and consultation and hopefully a stronger outcome of industry confidence and participation in this scheme.

As the government confirms in the explanatory memorandum for this bill, the product stewardship criteria are only one factor in determining whether regulations, co-regulatory or mandatory, can be made with respect to a class of products. There are two other considerations in addition to the criteria. One is that the bill requires that the minister be satisfied that making the regulations will further the objects of the act, and again that is a factor that has been reinforced time and again during discussions and deliberations of the committee and behind closed doors about how this bill will function.

Second, and I think particularly important, is the requirement—of which the government assures us throughout the explanatory memorandum and in the parliamentary secretary's second reading speech—that, as a matter of government policy, the usual regulatory impact assessment requirements would also apply. This is very important. This is not a factor that is detailed in the bill. It is, however, a factor that has been used time and again as reassurance. I would invite the parliamentary secretary, when he makes some remarks in this debate, again to provide that assurance from the government as to what will underpin that regulatory impact assessment process so that this debate has those issues clearly on the record, especially given that the website of the Office of Best Practice Regulation within the Department of Finance and Deregulation simply explains that a regulatory impact statement is required under the Australian government's requirements. That is one of those nice circular statements. We, of course, would just like, for the sake of conclusion in this debate, to ensure that the government's expectations and understanding of how that regulatory impact statement arrangement will work in this legislation are made clear so that all those who may be dealing with it in years to come have a clear record to refer back to in that regard.

Lastly, I just raise another matter that I invite the parliamentary secretary to respond to and that I have foreshadowed with him. Very late in the inquiry into this bill, the Senate committee received a late submission from the Law Council of Australia—the Intellectual Property Committee of its Business Law Section—concerning the creation of product stewardship logos under the voluntary product stewardship provisions. As the committee did not have an opportunity to consider in detail the issues raised but simply drew it to the government's attention, I would invite the parliamentary secretary to provide advice on how the government has considered that issue and what advice he has received from the Attorney-General's Department or others about its relevance.

In closing, I once again express my thanks to all parties for their cooperation on this and restate the coalition's commitment to this scheme, to the principle of product stewardship and, importantly, to our belief that wherever possible these should be schemes driven and owned by industry to make sure that they have genuine stewardship of their products throughout the life cycle.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to make some remarks on the Product Stewardship Bill 2011 on behalf of the Australian Greens. This is framework legislation that arises from COAG agreeing that the federal government and the states and territories should together establish a national framework to support voluntary, co-regulatory and mandatory product steward­ship and extended producer responsibility schemes to responsibly manage the enor­mous quantities of waste that Australians are generating. This national approach is the kind of policy infrastructure that is necessary to separate contaminating products and valuable products and massively reduce our landfill.

Facts and figures about how we currently handle our waste stream make the case as to why this measure is well and truly overdue. As I have said in committee hearings time and again, on this issue and on related issues that I will touch on, this is a policy portfolio for patient people. This really seems to have taken an inordinate amount of time to come to fruition, and I would like to congratulate the parliamentary secretary for steering us through these final phases, because this is genuinely well overdue. It is often very difficult to detect a sense of urgency amongst policymakers where waste is concerned, because of course historically it has been cheaper to simply dump our trash on a pile than to do something about the extraordinary waste of resources and, of course, the contamination at landfill sites, greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and so on that result—the hidden costs of the enormous profligacy of our consumer society. So it is good to at last be able to say that we can detect the faint stirrings of urgency. Australia uses over 12 billion beverage containers a year, for example. Only about half of those are recycled. Most of the remainder wind up as litter or in landfill. More than four billion plastic bags are given out at supermarkets. Barely any of those are recycled. Four million tonnes of packaging is used and discarded every year. Australians accumulate 18 million used tyres every year. Approx­imately four million tyres are landfilled every year, despite each tyre containing recyclable quantities, up to 1½ kilograms, of steel, half a kilogram of textile and seven kilos of rubber. And instead of responsibly dealing with our tyres, roughly 11 million, or about 60 per cent of them, are exported to Vietnam and China, where they are recycled—if you could call it that—under appalling labour conditions with really quite harmful environmental and public health impacts. In a portfolio where the crossbenches and the opposition support the moves that the government is making, I might call Senator Birmingham's attention, before we go too much further down the track of celebrating the importance of the RIS process, to the fact that this is one instance where a regulatory impact statement was undertaken. Through a process of arcane number-crunching, the economists decided that it was not worth bothering setting up any kind of product stewardship framework for tyres, so now we dump them in countries in our region where they are burnt and 'recycled', with enormously harmful conse­quences for host populations. So I think we need to be extremely cautious before we simply hand over the kind of policy-making decisions we are elected to provide to people with spreadsheets who will just plug a formula in and then two years later a result will fall out that says, 'Don't bother.' That is what happened in the instance of tyres.

Mobile phones, of course, are another nightmare. We have about 24 million in circulation in Australia as at 30 June 2010 in the hands of 70 per cent, or thereabouts, of Australians. They get replaced very often. I am convinced somewhere within each mobile phone there is a piece of software that says, 'Just before the next model is due to hit the market, this one will start getting flaky and then drop dead.' Again, that is a part of our consumer society that we need to draw attention to. We are getting very used to just taking these devices on and then, 20 minutes after they have been released, we feel like we are falling off the back of the curve and we turf them, and they wind up in landfill. Eighteen months to two years is the speed of product turnover in mobile phone markets. There are about 16 million old handsets in cupboards and drawers in Australian homes. Each one of these phones contains substances that we could contemplate as either being extremely hazardous, such as cadmium, lead, nickel, mercury, lithium, arsenic, or being valuable, such as metals like gold, silver and copper and plastics that can be shredded and reused as well.

The MobileMuster is a voluntary scheme, and here again is one example of why we had better be careful before we simply assume that the best solution across the board is for industry to just take care of these things itself. I appreciate the efforts of the people behind the MobileMuster. They have got 3½ thousand collection points around Australia and people can recycle their mobile phones by post. But the fact is—and the minister might like to contradict this figure, but it is the figure I have—we have about a five per cent recovery rate in that voluntary scheme. That is another way of saying we have a 95 per cent non-recovery rate of phones that find themselves in landfill or just wind up in drawers for all time, not being recycled and that material lost to us.

From November 1998 to 30 June 2010, 724 tonnes, including five-and-a-bit million handsets and batteries, were junked. Quite a bit of that can be recycled from the old mobile phones. The nickel in the batteries can be recovered, as can the gold and silver in the circuit boards, and the handset housings and casings can be used to make fence posts, pallets and other things that we make with recycled plastics. I was interested to read in the MobileMuster annual report that one tonne of mobile phone circuit boards can yield the same amount of precious metals as 110 tonnes of gold ore or 123 tonnes of silver-bearing ore and 11 tonnes of copper sulphide ore. So these things are valuable and we need somehow to figure out how to recover that material, and this obviously goes further than just what happens at the end of life. We need to look at the design and manufacture of these devices in the first place so that they are designed to be more easily disassembled. As one of the witnesses to the committee said, even if all the mobile phones that are being stored came out for recycling, MobileMuster does not have the infrastructure to take hold of those and recycle them. I will return to this as an interesting example where the industry has taken on itself to try and do the right thing, but it has not been sufficient, you would say, to actually come to grips with the overall scale of the problem.

Where there is better news is in the area of televisions, computers and so on, involving Product Stewardship Australia and the Australian Information Industry Association, which Senator Birmingham touched on. There we have industry peak bodies that have taken the lead based, I understand, on moves overseas. We are in a global market here and other countries are moving ahead. This is one quite clear-cut example where you can say industry has led from the front in requesting that the government take on and regulate for the entire industry so that people who want to do the right thing are not being competitively disadvantaged by free-riders. It looks as though we are in the process of getting that one right. There were 16.8 million televisions, computers and peripherals that died in 2008. Eighty per cent of those went to landfill; about 10 per cent were recycled. As the digital switchover occurs, as the NBN rolls out, and we know we are undergoing an enormous face of technological innovation in Australia at the moment, that pile of electronic or e-waste is only going to grow into a mountain. That is why it is good to notice that a focus on TVs and computers is welcome as the first scheme, otherwise we would be debating effectively empty legislation—a container bill with nothing in it. But we know that we do have an example of how this framework legislation will be used, and that is welcome.

If we do not get going with that properly, e-waste in Australian landfill will triple by 2020 and be close to 700 million items. That is an extraordinary waste of this material that we all know can be quite transitory as product cycles accelerate. As it is, there are 18 million TVs and 70 million computers and peripherals in landfill or on their way to landfill. These constitute about 38 per cent of current e-waste items in landfill. We know that we need to deal with items like fluorescent tubes, some of which contain mercury, and items like batteries that find their way into landfill and then pose enormous problems with water contam­ination as water percolates through the landfill piles and into local watertables. There is a good news story here about how many jobs, for example, would be created if we dealt responsibly with our waste. The Boomerang Alliance stated that a national recycling scheme for all e-waste would create 5,100 new jobs by 2015. That includes 1,440 direct jobs in the recycling of e-waste and another 3,660 indirect jobs. As Senators will know, I have been pushing for quite some time for a national container deposit scheme to handle the 12 billion beverage containers that are used in this country. If we put monetary value on those containers, we would see many fewer of them end up in our waterways, parks and bushland. So, just as we propose to tax carbon emissions so that the market suddenly sees a price signal on something that we do not want to throw away, we would be placing a tiny premium on the beverage container to give them an economic value. That, in effect, would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by nearly one million tonnes of CO2 per year. That is the equivalent of switching 135,000 homes to 100 per cent renewable energy. All that is based on is the 50-odd per cent of beverage containers that at the moment find their way into streams, the side of the road and landfill, the stuff that we buy, use and discard when we are away from home where recycling rates are obviously very poor. It is about bringing those into the system and recovering those materials—a million tonnes of CO2 per year.

It would save enough water to perman­ently supply more than 30,000 Australian homes. Because we would no longer be discarding the stuff, we would be getting those materials back. It would deliver air quality improvements equivalent to taking 56,000 cars off the road and create approximately 1,000 direct jobs. Our bev­erage containers made up, we are aware, of about 60 per cent of all glass items, 47 per cent of metal items and about a third of plastic items during the 2010 Clean Up Australia Day. Nine out of the top 10 items collected on that day were packaging materials which made up about 80 per cent of all waste collected. This is a huge volume of material at the moment simply going to waste.

There is broad, consistent and very high support in the community for a container deposit scheme. There is a demonstrated willingness to pay. The study was done twice, and now we are buried in the swamp of a regulatory impact statement process being undertaken by the Commonwealth on container deposits that simply has this proposal buried in quicksand. It is not good enough. At best, we think this could result in a scheme being implemented in four years time. Thanks to this analysis paralysis, we have to get faster and better and develop a sense of urgency when something is so obviously a good idea. For every 12 months that we drag our heels on this, another 12 billion beverage containers are used.

On 25 January this year, Northern Territory Chief Minister Paul Henderson put out a blazing press statement calling on the beverage industry to stop their misleading campaign against the cash for containers legislation. It is one of the sharpest pieces of language I think I have ever seen come out of a Premier's or Chief Minister's office where he said that the beverage industry should simply stop wasting its money on deceptive advertising to stop it. How different the situation is when we have got the industry peaks in the case of e-waste, computers and TVs backing a scheme and demanding coherent legislation for their sector and so of course things are moving. The case of the beverage industry could not be in starker contrast where they have dug their heels in and progress has been painfully slow because of the deceptive conduct of the beverage and packaging industries. I still do not completely understand why the hostility is so stark.

I have put these figures on the record to make the point that national approaches to our national waste crisis are very much needed. We have historically had a very weak response to this issue in Australia. We have got litter campaigns which are valuable: they marshal volunteers and get people out to pick material up. We have got industry-led voluntary programs that are limited in extent and need some kind of coherent framework and approach.

The main industry government program is of course the Australian Packaging Covenant, which sounds great but it does not really deliver as much as industry seems to think, despite what we continually hear about in the course of various pieces of committee work that have contributed to this debate. We acknowledge the benefits of the APC, but I do not think they are as great as some in industry believe that they are.

We still have very serious concerns at the extent to which voluntary schemes are emphasised at the expense of mandatory schemes in this bill. I know there is some kind of reflexive opposition on the coalition side to forms of mandatory regulation where a voluntary industry scheme might serve us better. We believe that the amendments that have been jointly negotiated between the Greens, the government and the opposition will sharpen the distinctions between the three kinds of schemes that this bill seeks to bring into force.

We know that if a voluntary program has sufficient resources and organisational capacity then infrastructure can be developed and the outcomes can be very strong. What this bill, I think, will do with a bit of goodwill—and I am happy if the minister wants to confirm this—is put some teeth into the voluntary schemes. Let's hear what the targets are and, if they are not being met, then let's review them and assess whether a scheme should maybe shift from being voluntary to co-regulatory. If a co-regulatory scheme is letting us down, then let's assess if those targets are failing to be met; let's move it up to a mandatory scheme.

Co-regulatory programs work when the industry wants them to, and I am very happy to give credit where it is due to the television and computer industry who obviously want to do something about their waste, as I say, driven by international imperatives to bring our extraordinary waste production under control.

We have worked with the government to ensure that the bill does not use federal powers to extinguish good state schemes. I would hate to see, for example, a defective container deposit scheme get up that squashed the good work that has been done in South Australia over the last 30 years or the initiative taken by the Northern Territory. We will be asking the government, when we drop into the committee stage, to clarify how that is going to work.

We have also worked constructively to address an issue that came up during the committee inquiry into the bill regarding the need for the minister to have some guidance and input from experts to help identify priorities and monitor progress and next steps. I think that is something that every single witness who came before the committee said should happen and I am glad that we have government and, I think, opposition support for those amendments by the Australian Greens to set the priorities. Such an advisory panel existed to guide the New South Wales product stewardship legislation. The independent committee in New South Wales was made up of experts, non-government organisations and industry reps. That was involved in establishing a list of priority products so that industry knew where the system was going and the prioritisation process was transparent for the community. That advice was offered on an ongoing basis.

We will also, when we get to the committee stage, make amendments to the objects clause of the bill that we think is very important, and I will discuss that shortly. I would like to thank the committee for its excellent and very useful report that provided a very useful distillation of the waste crisis in our country. We perhaps take our committee staff here for granted from time to time because of how regularly they astound us by their professionalism and efficiency but this report, I think, actually stands out. I would also like to thank the non-government organisations who work very hard in an, I suppose, unglamorous area of waste policy. It is work that is nonetheless extraordinarily important for the larger project of creating a genuinely sustainable Australia, for cleaning up our act, for cleaning up our fouled waterways, our parklands and our wilderness from rubbish and for recovering those valuable materials that go to waste.

I would also like to acknowledge my colleague in Victoria Colleen Hartland MLC, who I think today is reintroducing in the Victorian parliament her bill on container deposits because she shares the frustration of many people in this place that the Commonwealth has simply decided to bury a national container deposit scheme under endless reviews and analysis. Colleen my colleague in the Victorian parliament and her office have done an enormous amount of work in building support in Victoria for a state scheme. I still think that a national scheme is the right way to go and I suspect that industry would prefer a coherent set of regulations that applied across the country, but I really strongly commend Colleen Hartland MLC for bringing her bill forward to simply get on with the job of getting containers out of waterways and verges and into recycling centres where they belong.

One of the great benefits of a container deposit scheme is that it would mandate and fund the creation of a network of neighbourhood recycling centres. Once you get those up and running for beverage containers initially they become the drop-off point for batteries, fluorescent tubes and other objects that we might find intractable that simply end up in landfill.

I would again like to congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water, for the constructive way in which he has approached this bill. It is always good to get an exposure draft of a bill so that you can see where a particular area is headed. I would like to thank all sides for the constructive spirit in which negotiations were entered into for this bill. It is a rare bit of good news. I would like to see this, very strictly speaking, as the first step of many. This simply sets us up with a framework which will be free to succeed or fail depending on the amount of effort and energy that is put into it. I look forward to discussing some of these matters in greater detail in the committee stage and indicate that the Greens are happy to support the bill.

Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now you would not necessarily know it from the title of the Product Stewardship Bill but, yes, this bill is largely about waste and largely about the management of it. So why have we wasted so much time in getting to this point? Why have we wasted so much time when the Howard government supported the concept of a national scheme to reduce the impact on the environment and on health and safety of products and substances during their life and then at the end of their life? The Howard government supported that principle and that concept yet it is some years upon years later that we finally find ourselves in this place in the noncontroversial section of the legislative consideration hopefully poised to give passage and implement such a scheme.

Why has it taken so long? Why have we wasted so long in working out what to do nationally with our waste when, for example, the television and computer industry, largely composed of manufacturers and importers wanting to do the right thing, has recognised that we still use TVs with hazardous substances in them and we need to take TVs and computers off the footpath and get them out of landfill? That industry is one that has been working for a long time towards an industry resourced national scheme. The unnecessary distress caused to that industry and its largely well-meaning and hardworking people, when it needs some legislative enablement to get its scheme up and running before the end of this year, because this government has left its run until the 11th hour is indeed regrettable.

We know that we are about to be at a happier place in terms of the bill. Thanks to the departmental officers, and Ms Kelly Pearce and Dr Wright in particular, for their constructive engagement with us as members of the opposition, under of course the fine tutelage of the Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water, Senator Farrell. Thank you for your consideration of our views but also those views of industry. Taking so long in the gestation of what to do with our waste, the government claimed it had extensively consulted with industry last year culminating in the putting out of the discussion paper, which the government tried to say resulted in a whole lot of submissions as the precursor to this bill. The problem is that the government dumped—talk about waste—this bill in the House of Reps in March this year without having the forethought, the preparedness to release an exposure draft of the bill. It dumped the bill on the House of Reps in March and then thankfully, it decided to refer it to a Senate committee for inquiry.

But having referred a bill of that sort to a Senate committee inquiry without the benefit of an exposure draft, the man in the street would not know what product stewardship is when it is at home. Most people would not know. The man in the street would not know it if he fell over it. So it was all very nice for us to get excited as members of the Senate committee and say, 'Whoopee, we are having an inquiry into this bill, so it will all be sorted.' The trouble is even some of the stakeholders involved in the process through government last year were caught unawares by the inquiry and indeed the relevance of this bill to them and their industries. Product stewardship has existed as a term, no doubt, in the industry, bureaucratic and probably government vernacular for quite some time but, as I say, the normal man or woman in the street would not know it if they fell over it. The Senate Environment and Communica­tions Legislation Committee inquiry heard from a range of witnesses, who did realise that product stewardship had some consequences for them and their respective industries. They drove home mainly two messages: firstly, that the criteria that a product or substance has to meet before being able to be subject to the voluntary co-regulatory or mandatory regime set up by the bill were so wide you could drive a truck through them—the department did a very brave job giving evidence and suggesting that the criteria were filters, but in my warped interpretation of the English language filters reduce things that come through the other end and the trouble with these criteria is they do none of that—and, secondly, the bill gives industry no practical place to start. It potentially says that every product and every substance under the sun—indeed, every product on the supermarket shelf, so said witnesses—is potentially subject to this bill. Those in industry want to do the right thing, but they know not where to start as the bill gives no suggestion—in the language of some witnesses, 'Pick the low-hanging fruit; please suggest where we might start.' It leaves industry swinging in a stewardship wasteland.

Thankfully, following the Senate inquiry, as I said, the government has taken quite some note of the Senate committee's report and that has resulted in discussions taking place. It also resulted, very importantly, in belated consultations with industry stake­holders including between the government and industry stakeholders. For example, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry became far more involved in consideration of the bill and was able to contribute constructively in where we find ourselves today.

In looking forward to supporting the bill and supporting a range of amendments that have been tabled and circulated, I also hope that the government will learn some lessons from this process. This should be and will be not only a bipartisan but a tripartisan or a quadruple-partisan policy. It is a good thing, but just because something sounds good does not mean that it will do good unless you make sure that you implement it the right way. That means—please, government, and please, Senator Farrell—that the message for your colleagues is explain things to the people, to the stakeholders, consult with the stakeholders and do as the Prime Minister says: let the damn sunshine in. We are all deprived of vitamin D these days, did you know? Let the sunlight in; do not leave it to the last minute to consult with those who could help you achieve a constructive outcome.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank all the contributors to this debate on the Product Stewardship Bill, particularly Senators Birmingham, Fisher and Ludlam. I noted the complimentary remarks from Senators Fisher and Ludlam, but really the credit should go to my staff and also to the people from the department, Diana Wright and Kelly Pearce, who have worked so hard to ensure that this legislation passes the parliament. It is reassuring that we have had such strong support and such strong cooperation from the opposition and the Greens so that we get a more effective and consistent approach to reducing the impact of products and hazardous substances in products on the environment and on human health.

Senator Birmingham raised a couple of issues, which I would like to specifically address. The first related to the regulatory impact statement. The bill sits within a strong governance framework that encourages consultation and evidence based decision making. Before any decision to regulate a product can be made, a regulatory impact analysis is required. As explained in paragraph 19 of the explanatory memoran­dum, this is both government and COAG policy. The regulatory impact analysis is a robust process that articulates the problems to be addressed. It assesses not only the economic but also the social and environ­mental benefits and costs in taking action to address a particular problem. There is no preconception that a particular solution like product stewardship is the best approach; a range of options is considered.

The impact analysis process typically involves significant consultation. For example, the television and computers con­sultation regulatory impact statement was released and public meetings were run—also a requirement to publish the results of this process. Once a decision to regulate is made, taking into account the impact analysis in section 17, the Legislative Instruments Act requires consultations on the regulation.

Senator Birmingham raised the letter that the Law Council sent to the committee. The letter raised the issue of use of the logo to support accreditation of voluntary schemes and, in particular, the interaction of the bill with the Trade Marks Act. In essence, the Law Council's concern was that the bill duplicates elements of the Trade Marks Act dealing with what are known as certification trademarks. These provisions in the Trade Marks Act allow, for example, a body like the Heart Foundation to register the Heart Foundation tick and certify that certain goods meet the Heart Foundation's standards. I have sought advice from my department and, through the department, from IP Australia on this matter. I am advised that the bill complements rather than duplicates the Trade Marks Act provisions. In fact, it is anticipated that the product stewardship logo would be required as a certification trademark under the Trade Marks Act, which I hope answers Senator Birmingham's question. Without any further discussion, I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.