Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor welcomes these bills. We generate 67 million tonnes of waste a year and a large portion of that waste is recyclable. On a per capita basis, we generate more than a hundred kilograms of plastic each and every year, yet we recycle barely 12 per cent of that waste. We're not alone in having that problem. Globally, more than 10 million tonnes of plastic finds its way into the oceans every year, and that is only expected to grow. Some estimates are that it will triple in the next 20 years—wrap your minds around that proposition. We are going to need to come to grips with this as a parliament, as a country and, frankly, as a planet, because the environmental effects of large amounts of plastic entering the ecosystem are stark and well understood. Everyone has seen the horrific photos of the impact on wildlife—turtles with straws, birds that have ingested large amounts of plastic—and we're confronted by the visible reminders of our waste habits when we see the debris in our creek beds and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which swirls around in the ocean environment that we inhabit. The evidence for the impact on human health is growing. We know that microplastics have entered marine ecosystems and are accumulating in the food chain, with uncertain effects.

Our current practices are not sustainable in any sense of the word. Limited materials are sunk into ultradisposable products—many of them have a life span of minutes before being thrown away—and there is no doubt that the best future for Australia and for the world lies in building a more circular economy, where materials are seen as a resource to use minimally and to reuse and recycle to the maximum extent possible. There's a strong economic incentive to act. In addition to being environmentally responsible, it allows the prospect of creating new resource recovery and manufacturing opportunities, and that means jobs and employment. For every 10,000 tonnes of waste recycled, 9.2 jobs are created, and you can compare that to the 2.8 jobs when the same amount of plastic goes into landfill.

The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and related bills build on an important Labor legacy. Labor supercharged the process towards a more sustainable approach to material management by creating a national waste policy in 2009. We introduced the Product Stewardship Act in 2011, and that was a major step forward in developing a regulatory framework to encourage responsible waste management in partnership with industry. Labor created the one co-regulatory scheme in existence, the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme, and the well overdue statutory review of the relevant act confirms the fundamental value of this scheme. These bills establish a framework for the phased ban on the export of certain waste materials and they also absorb the regulatory framework previously contained in the Product Stewardship Act 2011, while making some minor changes to the substantive rules for product stewardship.

The government should have acted significantly sooner, but it has dragged its heels on this question. These bills are best understood as a response to our inability to export our waste, as we previously were able to do. In January 2018, China instituted its National Sword policy, which banned the importation of most categories of waste. Until that point, a large proportion of Australia's waste products were sent to China. Similar announcements were subsequently made by India, Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand, and there were reports of paper and glass building up in waste management centres across Australia. Some municipalities resorted to dumping recyclable waste in landfill to deal with the problem. These changes forced Australia's hand, and in March this year COAG agreed to ban the export of waste glass, plastics, tyres and paper.

The reality is that exporting our waste was never a good solution. It is ultimately, and indeed by definition, unsustainable. It is not a real long-term solution. There were reports that material was not necessarily being recycled in the jurisdictions we were exporting this waste to. In some cases rubbish was burned, buried or thrown into rivers. Nonetheless, exporting that waste could have, in theory, bought us time to deal with our own waste problem, but that time was not used. The government could have been transitioning to a more sustainable use of resources during their time in office. Instead, next to nothing has been done. The amount of waste we exported actually grew under this government. Three million tonnes were being exported in 2006-07, compared to 4.5 million tonnes by 2018-19.

As I've already indicated, they didn't even do the required statutory review on time. That review of the Product Stewardship Act was supposed to be handed down in 2016 but was handed down three years later. There are consequences for the endless delay on almost everything by this government on matters of substance. On this question, a Senate inquiry into this bill heard from the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation. and they said:

I think it [the review of the NEPM] would have been a useful contribution to the discussion. The NEPM, like any regulation, has both positive and negative in it, and there are things that we recognise could be done better going forward. I think the fact that we're 20 years into that regulation and there hasn't been a review is probably more indicative of some of the issues or some of the perceptions that are currently out there, and I think that if a NEPM review had been done earlier then obviously it would have informed this discussion and given rise to thinking around other alternatives as well.

Since taking office, the coalition has taken no action in listing any new item for co-regulatory or mandatory schemes. It is clearly not a priority for this government, whose indifference to the natural environment is scandalous.

As I said, we welcome these bills. They are an important step but they do not go far enough. There are a number of specific amendments before the Senate to improve the operation of this act, but we also need practical steps to support recycling. The government announced a recycling fund after last year's election; however, it turns out that $100 million of this was, in fact, merely a reallocation of existing Clean Energy Finance Corporation funds, and questions to the government this year confirmed that not a single dollar had been loaned to support recycling infrastructure through the CEFC. The $20 million National Product Stewardship Investment Fund has not made a single grant.

The Senate inquiry into this bill noted the urgent need for the Commonwealth 'to adopt sustainable procurement models to provide leadership and boost the recyclables sector'. The inquiry recommended that the government should expedite consideration of a cost-benefit analysis of large infrastructure projects, including mandatory targets for the use of a percentage of recycled material. Most importantly, as the Labor senators noted in the inquiry's report on this bill:

Australia's lack of capacity to recycle the waste we produce, especially in certain material categories like plastic, is not unrelated to the lack of demand for recyclate, and there is no doubt this must be an area of focus and support, both through relevant procurement arrangements, and through product stewardship arrangements that are effective in seeing changes in product design and the lifting of recycled content outcomes.

The failure of the Morrison government to finalise market incentives for the use of recycled materials before implementing an export ban is creating a risk that domestic reprocessed materials which can be repurposed may still go to landfill after the bans are in place. As noted, such matters can only be addressed through the adequate provision of procurement targets that would drive the acquisition of waste materials. As the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia noted:

I think the perverse outcomes we were talking about first and foremost were the fact that we've lost access to markets by bringing in the export bill without the commensurate demand onshore. The opportunity existed, if there was more emphasis on the product stewardship, with the paradigm shift towards generator responsibility, of utilising that product onshore. So, if I'm the packager that's making the plastic that was previously getting exported, now I have to use that packaging material in Australia, because it's good food grade. We could have avoided those perverse outcomes of additional stockpiling or landfilling. So the opportunity that's being missed today is the integration of these packages to change the shift of the paradigm to say, 'This is good material that could be used over and over in Australia and create jobs'.

I'll conclude by making the obvious point that this is a disappointingly familiar story. The previous Labor government put in place a scheme to tackle a major problem. The scheme suffers neglect under the coalition. It turned out that there were consequences for literally taking no action at all, and the government was forced to take action. But, instead of getting a proper scheme that would stimulate jobs and build industry, we get a minor regulatory fix. Recycling, climate, energy—that is a story that we see time and time again. This government is incapable of recognising environmental problems as being worth fixing. It is incapable of recognising the economic opportunities that come when you engage with environmental challenges properly. These bills are a necessary first step, but they're a step that should have been taken years ago and been accompanied by real action to build a real market for recycled materials in Australia.

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

I really am glad to be rising to speak on this bill that the government calls the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020. But the simple problem is that it does very little to reduce waste in Australia and it doesn't give the recycling industry the certainty they need to invest in a circular economy and move this country out of the waste crisis that we have been in since China soared in 2017. We have a historic opportunity with this bill to not only fix this waste crisis, create tens of thousands of new green jobs in a green industry, in recycling, and solve an environmental problem but also do a solid for our oceans and our community.

This is very important to me personally. For nearly 15 years, I've been campaigning on trying to stop plastic going into the ocean. Nearly half of that time has been in this building, in parliament. In my first speech, I talked about this issue and some of the fantastic people in the community and in the environment movement I've been working with to tackle this problem. My first senator's statement was about tackling marine debris. I feel very privileged to have had the platform as a senator with a fantastic committee system and the cooperation across political parties to have initiated and chaired two Senate inquiries into marine plastic and into the plastic waste crisis we find ourselves in. This was the world's first parliament to do so. We were the first parliament to inquire into this most pervasive and enormous environmental problem and how we were going to get our way out of this waste crisis, because we've been so lazy by exporting our contaminated waste to the rest of the world for so long. We came up with a series of very good recommendations.

So this is important to me. I know it's extremely important to my party—that is, my colleagues, who are going to make fantastic contributions to this debate; to Greens state MPs; to dozens of fantastic local government representatives for the Greens around the country; the supporters; and the environment movement. If I were to name the good people that I have campaigned shoulder to shoulder with on this for the last 15 years, my entire speech would be taken up by naming them, but I will try and get their names on record at some stage soon.

But here's the really interesting thing. I was really surprised—and I must say pleasantly surprised; you'd have to forgive me for being a little bit cynical—when the Prime Minister mentioned at a press conference that his daughter had raised this issue with him and that he was going to tackle this problem. I was even more surprised when he made it the keynote part of his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2019. Of course, I'd like to have seen him talking about Australia taking a leadership role in climate change, but I wasn't going to complain that a prime minister of this country was telling the world that Australia was going to lead on this issue of tackling marine plastics—the toxic tide, the scourge of plastics in our ocean. And I understand it was something he discussed with US President-elect, soon to be President, Joe Biden; it was one of the issues they discussed on the telephone.

The problem is that this bill, the way it is written, doesn't act on plastics in the ocean because it deliberately excludes plastic packaging, the key source of marine plastics. Yes, of course it is a global problem on a massive scale. As we speak now, thousands of tonnes of mostly single-use plastics are making their way into the ocean. It's been estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. We're finding microplastics in plankton in the Antarctic. It's all through our seafood chain. Yet what do we do about it? If you came to someone who understood this issue and said: 'How are we going to take action to reduce plastics in the ocean? What's the single most important thing you would do?' They would say: 'Ban the single-use plastics that are causing so much problem. Reduce our consumption and production of plastics that are almost impossible to recycle and that form so much of the litter and the trash that does so much damage to our precious marine life.' So the first thing you'd do is ban those plastics. But guess what? There's nothing in here to ban plastics. There's nothing in here to hold accountable the big producers of plastic—some of the most profitable companies in Australia and internationally—and the retailers of plastic products, like the big supermarket chains. There's nothing in here to mandate strong targets for those companies. That's the second thing you would do; you would say, 'If plastic packaging is the problem, let's try and reduce as much as we can of the stuff that we just don't need.'

By the way, everybody agrees, including the Australian Packaging Covenant, that we need to get rid of problematic single-use plastics. But where's the action on it? I'll tell you where it is: it's in the states and it's in the territories. They're going their own way because we've failed to show national leadership on this issue. The Senate Environment and Communications Committee recommended a ban on single-use plastics in 2017. It's not even included in the government's threat abatement plan for marine debris. Guess when marine plastic was declared a threatening process under federal environmental laws? In 2003! Nearly 20 years later we still haven't tackled the key source of plastic that's doing so much damage. But today, next week, this chamber and this parliament can do that. I expect we will do that, and that's what the Australian people expect of all of us. There's no more time for being cute and no more time for technicalities, excuses or wriggle room. Let's do it!

I'll talk in more detail about the Greens' amendments and other amendments when we get to the committee stage. They've been circulated now for over a month. We've had discussions with all political parties and all Independents about this issue. We can create Aussie jobs. Banning the export of waste, okay, was probably not the way I thought the government was going to go but, given the waste crisis we find ourselves in, if we ban the export of waste such as plastics, it does put it back on us to do something about it. It forces us to deal with this problem. If we go down the right path—and what we do in the Senate will dictate that—and build a circular economy then we will create Australian jobs, and not just in the big cities but also in rural and remote Australia. We will see massive upgrades in technology and infrastructure from the recycling industry. The recycling industry want to fix this problem, but they need policy certainty, and I'll go into that in more detail when we get to the Greens amendment on mandatory product stewardship schemes.

I can't stress how important it is that we get this right. This is the first piece of legislation on waste that this parliament has seen in nearly a decade—I would say nearly two decades. I do acknowledge what Senator McAllister said earlier about Labor's contribution around product stewardship schemes. The architecture is already there. If anything, the second part of this bill, which is rewriting product stewardship schemes, really just fiddles around the edges. It has some added benefits and measures that we support, but it doesn't get to the root cause of the problem. But, as I said, I am convinced that we will do so today and next week, when we vote on this.

I put up a private member's bill over 18 months ago to ban single-use plastics, to copy the European Parliament. I had been genuinely disappointed that the European Parliament beat us to the punch. They were the first parliament in the world to ban single-use plastics—although this chamber, this Senate, was the first to have a parliamentary inquiry into the problem. The Europeans beat us and banned single-use plastics, so I put up a bill that was going to do that. I also put up a private member's bill that was going to take the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation's voluntary targets for plastic and other packaging and mandate those, to put them into law—to take Labor's existing architecture and legislation and mandate it. I believe APCO when they tell me they are different from what they used to be. In 2005 APCO set themselves some targets for 2010 to achieve a 30 per cent recycling rate in this country. Ten years later, does anybody know what it is? It's 16 per cent. After 15 years we're recycling only 16 per cent of the plastic we consume in this country.

The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation, which is predominantly made up of big packaging companies and retailers, have had these voluntary targets that they have never come close to meeting, and they've never been held to account. It's time for that to end. The recycling industry employs nearly 60,000 Australians, and it could be tens of thousands more if we had a full circular economy. If we back the recycling industry and give them the policy certainty they are asking for—and they support the amendments that will be before the Senate—we can actually create a circular economy with tens of thousands of jobs and solve an environmental problem.

There are four key stakeholders in this debate: the recycling industry; the packaging and retailing industry; local governments, who do a lot of the kerbside recycling; and community and environment groups. When my bill went to the Senate's environment committee we took extensive evidence, and three of those stakeholders supported the amendments that will be before the Senate. Local governments supported mandatory product stewardship schemes banning single-use plastics. Environment and community groups unanimously cheered on mandatory product stewardship schemes—government putting packaging targets into law and banning single-use plastics. Three out of the four supported it—no surprises as to who didn't support it: the packaging industry.

Now, in saying that, I'll be really clear: APCO said that they were agnostic as to what kind of structure they were put under. And the big retailers, like Woolworths and the Food and Grocery Council—which deals with a lot of the APCO members; I was on a really good hook-up with the CEO of Amcor—all said that they were going to meet their 2025 voluntary targets. They're confident that they're going to meet them, so why would they have a problem with the Senate mandating them in law? You can talk the talk; walk the walk. It's easy enough.

When we get to the committee stage we'll be able to talk in more detail about why banning single-use plastics is important—why taking voluntary schemes and mandating them, giving the recycling industry the confidence it needs, is so important if we want to fix this problem. In a truly circular economy, waste doesn't exist. Rubbish doesn't exist—the term doesn't exist—because everything has value. Everything is created for its end of life. It doesn't end up in the ocean and it doesn't end up in landfill. It ends up being reused and creating Australian jobs.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and the related bills. In doing so, as senators often do, we reflect on the constituents in our communities—for me, people all across Queensland who would be listening in to this debate and paying special attention. I live in Cairns, the same place as does Molly Steer. She is a 12-year-old campaigner, who led the Straw No More campaign and managed to eradicate straws from cans when at a very young age—she was 10 or 11 years old when she started her campaign. I give this speech today in full recognition of the fact that there are people like Molly listening and wondering what the government has done after all its rhetoric about action on recycling, on waste and on plastics.

Labor supports this bill but remains critical of the government's inaction when it comes to regulatory reform of waste management and, quite frankly, to job creation in recycling—we know there's that potential if the government gets the settings right. Evidence from the Senate inquiry showed that, while stakeholders support an export waste ban, this bill lacks effectiveness. It highlights the Morrison government's poor track record of making lots of announcements and failing to deliver on those promises. This bill and the related bills would introduce a ban on the export of certain waste materials through a new licensing and declaration scheme, with standard qualifying requirements, fees and charges to cover those costs, and reporting arrangements. The bills would replace and update existing product stewardship laws, making overdue changes to the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme.

This legislation has been introduced, in part, because of China's decision in 2018 to ban the importation of most categories of waste—a decision which had a major consequence for the Australian waste management sector. It has meant that Australia now needs to dramatically increase our recycling capability and to better manage waste across the board. Labor has been critical of the government for its inaction when it comes to regulatory reform for waste management. Since the Liberal-National government came to power, it has taken no action in listing any new items for co-regulatory or mandatory schemes. The Morrison government has taken three years to conduct a review at a time when the country's waste crisis is worsening. Labor will support these bills, because there is no time to delay when it comes to banning the export of waste materials. But, in doing so, we want to highlight to the Senate some of the evidence that was received during the Senate inquiry and contained in the report handed down last month.

Stakeholders have said that they do support this legislation, but are concerned about the effectiveness of the legislation itself and some of the failures of this government to get the policy settings right. Stakeholders, including the National Waste and Recycling Industry Council, have acknowledged the government's lack of focus on reforming Australia's product stewardship regime. In their submission, the National Waste and Recycling Industry Council said:

The Global Product Stewardship Council submission said:

We encourage the Government to consider reflecting more of a clear willingness to pursue coregulatory approaches as appropriate to build upon the proposed strengthening around the Minister's priority list.

Stakeholders also recognised problems with the National Environment Protection (Used Packaging Materials) Measure 2011, which regulates industry participation for improving environmental outcomes for plastic packaging.

The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation drove this point home in their evidence to the committee inquiry. They said:

I think the fact that we're 20 years into that regulation and there hasn't been a review is probably more indicative of some of the issues or some of the perceptions that are currently out there, and I think that if a NEPM review had been done earlier then obviously it would have informed this discussion and given rise to thinking around other alternatives as well.

Labor agrees that this evidence should be heeded, and notes that the Morrison government should have reviewed the National Environment Protection (Used Packaging Materials) Measure 2011 in conjunction with the Product Stewardship Act. As Senator McAllister pointed out, it was the former Labor government that established the product stewardship framework in 2011, which included the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme. This has led to the recycling of 360,000 tonnes of computer and TV e-waste. But since the Liberal-National government were elected they have failed to introduce any additional co-regulatory or mandatory schemes.

Witnesses during the inquiry recognised the government's shortcomings in meeting key targets, including the goal of achieving 70 per cent recycling of packaging and elimination of unnecessary packaging. Currently only 12 per cent of plastic packaging in Australia is recycled, despite it being a major contributor to Australia's waste crisis. This raises the question of whether the targets can be achieved within the current voluntary participation framework.

It is a shame that it took a ban on importations by another country and several other key nations for the government to act on waste and recycling. There is now a serious deficiency in Australia's recycling capacity. There is now less capacity to recycle plastic than there was in 2005. All of those jobs that could have been created through this industry if the government had been willing to act have gone wanting. In Australia we recycle only 12 per cent of plastics—58 per cent of waste in total. The government's own review found that the growing number of industry free riders is the primary factor that leads to a failed voluntary scheme, yet their limiting response is to set up a form of naming and shaming to influence businesses to take responsibility but without any way of effecting that change.

This bill also brings into sharp focus some of the empty words and lack of follow-up by the Prime Minister and the Morrison government. They are always there for the photo op. When it comes to recycling, those photo ops are always quite flamboyant, always very interesting. The media releases go out. The Prime Minister has said he will champion recycling personally, but he still has not delivered on this. Just one week after the election the member for Leichhardt, Warren Entsch, hit the headlines in Cairns about his so-called war on plastic pollution. It was the major media story after the election. Mr Entsch, who had been returned as the member for Leichhardt, appeared on the front page of the local paper holding up a big bag of waste and saying he was going to declare a war on waste to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

In making those announcements, the Morrison government promised $100 million for the Australian Recycling Investment Fund, to be run by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. That's $100 million that this government promised. This scheme was intended to provide concessional loans of between $10,000 and $5 million to support the manufacturing of products from recycled plastics and paper, to take on the 'war on waste'. But, over 12 months later, not a single cent of this fund has been spent—a promise of $100 million, but nothing has been spent. This is starting to become a very familiar pattern for this government. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has confirmed that zero dollars have been loaned to date. The Morrison government has form when it comes to making carefully packaged announcements on waste and recycling, but, in large part, they're not worth the paper that they are written on.

The Morrison government also promised $20 million for the National Product Stewardship Investment Fund. This money was supposed to provide grants of between $300,000 and $1 million to encourage new and existing product stewardship schemes for batteries, electronic products and plastic oil containers. But in June this year the environment department revealed that the guidelines for this program had not even been finished—a $20 million announcement, and we don't even have guidelines yet, and the money isn't being spent. All these things that have been promised—here we go again.

These two schemes form part of the Morrison government's $167 million recycling investment package. I'm sure that, in their speeches today, senators opposite will be talking about all these numbers, all these schemes and all these programs. Can I tell you, Madam Acting Deputy President Kitching, they don't mean anything if you don't actually deliver them. At least 72 per cent of the package that was announced by the Morrison government has made no difference to Australia's waste crisis 18 months on. Eighteen months on—after the waste crisis was finally acknowledged by this government, and a war on waste was declared by members like Mr Entsch in Leichhardt and by the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison himself—at least 72 per cent of the package has not been delivered. Failures like this undermine the federal government's promise that the $600 million Recycling Modernisation Fund would create 10,000 jobs and divert 10 million tonnes of waste from landfill—again, big numbers, big promises, but it's just not happening. These aren't isolated examples of incompetence. There is example after example of promises not being delivered by this government. Eight months ago, the Morrison government announced a $4 billion Emergency Response Fund to prepare for disaster recovery, and we know that that has not been rolled out. There are countless other examples of announcements made by this government, and recycling and waste is just another area where it has failed to deliver.

Labor supports this bill because there is no time to delay when it comes to banning waste materials and developing our recycling and waste industry. We want to see those jobs in places like regional Queensland. But we remain critical of the Morrison government's record on waste management. If the Morrison government continue to lag behind on targets to cut plastic pollution, this bill will not be as effective as it could be. Under the Liberal-National government, only 12 per cent of plastic packaging is being recycled. Progress on election promises like the $100 million Australian Recycling Investment Fund and the $20 million National Product Stewardship Investment Fund have stalled. The government have promised to spend this money, and they have failed. Time and time again, the Morrison government are failing to roll out what they are promising in a timely manner or in a manner that would make a difference. In many cases, they can't even get program guidelines finalised.

In conclusion, I say to the young people living in Cairns, particularly Molly Steer, the activist of the Straw No More campaign, all the people who have stood next to members like Mr Entsch, all the people who have gone to the plastics summits and stood next to the Prime Minister as he's delivered yet another announcement and a commitment to take on this war on waste: unfortunately, the government are not delivering on their promises to you. They were very happy to stand up next to you, very happy to get a photo with you, very happy to tell you the big numbers they were going to spend and going to deliver, but they're not doing that. They stood next to young people and told them that they were going to take action on recycling and waste, they stood next to workers and said they were going to create jobs in this industry, but they haven't. The numbers don't lie. They are not spending this money and they are not rolling out these packages, and it can only be for one reason—that is, they really are not committed to taking action on recycling, taking action to help our environment or taking action to create jobs.

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

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I'm very pleased to say that One Nation will support this bill. It's a rare event when I can honestly compliment the government for the quality of their drafting and the sincerity of the process. We have the courage and the integrity to give credit where it's due. This bill has been developed over many years of consultation, public submissions, exposure drafts and fine-tuning. The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 is an excellent outcome.

The provisions allow the minister discretion to pick the approach on an industry-by-industry basis, yet with enough written discretion for the minister so that there can be no backsliding. The time frames envisaged in the legislation are appropriate. The Greens amendments, sadly, are bringing forward time frames to the point where they will place an onerous burden on industry, and that means on jobs. Industry must have time to change their practices in a sensible and orderly fashion. Products with outdated packaging must be allowed to work their way through the supply chain so that small businesses and family supermarkets and low turnover areas—often rural and regional Australia—are not left holding products that are illegal to sell. Where industry doesn't cooperate, there are penalties in this bill to ensure compliance. Those penalties are fit for purpose. The Greens amendments to increase the penalties would place a burden on small and medium business such that they are likely to threaten the future of those businesses.

Almost every policy that comes from the Greens demonstrates a complete failure to understand rural and regional Australia and small business—in fact, a failure to understand Australia. Australia is more than the big cities. It's more than the inner big cities. The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill finds the right balance between urgency and fairness. And there is urgency required around this issue. Every year 645,000 tonnes of waste is exported to Third World countries from Australia. The locals there sift through the waste to remove anything of value, and, sadly, the leftover waste is often dumped into rivers, where it makes its way into our oceans. I often see social media posts pointing out that the garbage problem in the oceans comes from just seven major rivers and, therefore, is not our problem. The point that social media is missing here is that the waste from those rivers originated in countries like ours. It's our waste, and we need to own it and deal with it ourselves. This bill does exactly that.

Processing such a large amount of extra waste will create additional employment here in Australia. Now, I appreciate that the Morrison government is getting quite the reputation for dodgy job creation stats—trying to look good, not do good. The budget laid claim to creating more jobs than there are unemployed. For example, 400,000 JobMaker positions turned into 40,000, one-tenth. I was pleased, then, to fact check the figures for job creation contained in the explanatory memorandum to this bill and to find, to my surprise, they are accurate. This bill should create 10,000 new jobs, at a time when those jobs are badly needed. This bill is a win for the environment, a win for local industry and a win for the countries that we will no longer be using as our rubbish dumps.

In the waste reduction space, I often hear the phrase 'circular economy'. What it actually means is reusing plastics by cleaning them and then melting them down to re-enter the production process. As such, recycled resins compete with new resin. The suggestion on the CSIRO website is that the cheap cost of new resin makes the high cost of re-used resin commercially unviable. The Greens would add a carbon dioxide tax to new resin, meaning oil, to make the new option dear enough to make recycled resins attractive. Adding cost needlessly is typical Green thinking. Their solution is always to tax it or ban it.

One Nation has a better idea. Our CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, has a role to play here. I acknowledge that it's been a long time since the industrial element of their charter has been used. The CSIRO, after all, has become in some ways a propagandist for global governance. Yet, I live in hope that the organisation charged by the Australian people with finding industrial solutions to everyday problems and challenges can come to our rescue here.

Let's talk about what the CSIRO is actually doing on this topic. Their website states:

Has the CSIRO gone mad? The next one is:

Won't that create so called greenhouse gases—the dreaded carbon dioxide? What rank hypocrisy from the CSIRO. It says:

Isn't that the Productivity Commission's or Treasury's job? How is that anything to do with the CSIRO? The last point from the CSIRO is:

biological catalysts—

and identifying recycling options and new bio-materials that could be less destructive to the environment.

There we go: finally a mention on contributing the science behind a whole new Australian industry for biodegradable and compostable plastics that will drive billions of dollars of economic growth.

I remember when the CSIRO invented things and solved problems that Australia faced. The CSIRO, sadly is now more interested in telling us that we have a problem than they are in fixing the problem, and, at times, the CSIRO helps politicians fabricate problems. I'll get back to the bill, after suggesting my hope for the CSIRO.

This bill is a massive opportunity for free enterprise to fix the problem of human progress. I urge the CSIRO to work with industry to produce biodegradable and compostable plastics that will allow Australians to simply switch from environmentally-damaging materials to environmentally-friendly materials. There is an opportunity, because pollution is waste. There is an opportunity for higher productivity. There is an opportunity for higher profits to those who are sensible. For example, safety was seen as a cost burden, yet incidents are a waste, so improving safety by removing incidents is an aid to reducing waste. It's an aid to improving productivity and profit. That's changing. Fortunately, people are starting to work out safety is not a cost and not a burden; it's potentially a boost to productivity.

Secondly, quality used to be seen as a cost, as a burden. Defects are obviously waste. Now quality is starting to be seen by enlightened management as improving productivity and profit. The environment is similar. The environment is seen as a cost by many—seen as a burden. Yet pollution is waste. Pollution is the enemy of productivity. Pollution is waste, and when we remove the waste—remove the pollution—it improves the environment and it improves productivity and profit.

Real environmental problems, like real pollution of air, soil and water, are costly to humanity, to business and to profits. Fortunately, humans address real pollution. In California, for example, the pollution coming out of car exhausts is now one-thousandth of what it was in the seventies. That has led to more efficient use of fuel, which has saved money for people—

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Roberts, you'll be in continuation when debate resumes.