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

For the last three years, the government have presided over bushfires, climate change, mass extinction and a major waste crisis without taking meaningful action. Meanwhile, our oceans, our rivers, our lands and our country are being choked with waste. The Greens have been consistent in this parliament about what needs to be done. More importantly, we've been working with grassroots mobs and community groups fighting to end plastic pollution in our oceans, rivers and lands. Senator Ludlam in 2009 introduced a private member's bill for a mandatory cash-for-containers scheme, but those opposite voted it down in 2013. If we had a good and caring government, one that wasn't there for themselves but actually cared for country, then they would have strengthened our response to the waste crisis and addressed how we produce and consume waste, particularly plastics. Every single bit of plastic that anyone has ever used still exists, and it's choking our country.

The government are making a big song and dance about this bill, flashing it around to take some heat off them while they take a chainsaw to our national environment laws, in some instances literally, like the chainsaws that tore through Djab Wurrung country. Do not be fooled. This is the first national waste legislation we have seen in over 10 years. This legislation, if passed, will be a massive missed opportunity, as it is without substantive amendments. It doesn't address plastic packaging. Think about that. The biggest reform in a decade to go through this place about the waste that we create doesn't address plastic packaging, the actual source of the problem and why our rivers and oceans are being choked in the first place. Here we are with a dodgy bill that is all headline and no substance. That's what happens when you have a government that is led by the marketing department. A good and caring government would do something about protecting our oceans and waterways from plastics. In the absence of that government, it's up to the Greens to amend this bill to make the issue of plastic pollution a priority. More needs to be done, and we are here to do it. I urge the government to agree to our amendments, which make sensible improvements to the bills to make a real difference to our oceans, our rivers, our lands and our waters.

First Nations people cared for country, lands and waters because we are connected to them in ways most people could never, ever understand. When this country was colonised its colonisers and settlers came in here thinking that this was their land and that they had nothing to learn from its First Peoples. It's only taken 240 years to trash, burn and desecrate our country. We lived, thrived, survived and sustained for thousands and thousands of generations. The colonisers came and you are all beneficiaries of the stolen wealth of this country, It took only a couple of hundred years for you to destroy it all, and now we've got the climate emergency.

We know a thing or two about managing country and looking after country. You might want to start listening to the First Peoples of the land. We know how to do it. We even have three- and four-year-old kids talking about how we need to reduce plastic. If you go to any kindergarten—in fact, you might want to learn from this—or preschool, you'll find that they're teaching our children how bad plastic straws are. I have my granddaughters FaceTiming me to show me their new recyclable straws and other things they're getting from their kindergartens, because that's where they are getting a real education. Obviously, that wasn't available to our government members at the time when they were at kinder, and that's why plastic is not a big concern for them. Listen to us and learn from us, or go to kindergartens and learn from the kids. Your first step should be agreeing to our amendments to this bill and listening to the three- and four-year-olds, who would also agree, because, if we look after country, country will look after us.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking to the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and related bills, this legislative monument to this government's lack of ambition, I wouldn't be able to do justice to this contribution without first acknowledging my esteemed colleague Senator Whish-Wilson, the good senator from Tasmania, or, as he's known by those who follow him on Instagram and Twitter, the 'Senator Surfer' himself. Pete's a good mate of mine. We've worked together for a good many years now, and I have to say in all seriousness that I don't think there is anybody who quite matches his passion for the oceans, his passion for our precious places and his desire to see, particularly, our rivers and oceans freed of the scourge of plastics that so choke them all around the planet. We know that the issue of plastics, including microplastics, in our oceans is of great urgency, both as something that is affecting our precious places and their livability for the countless creatures that call them home and because the presence of plastic in our food chains is leading to negative health impacts for those in our communities. We know that if we don't take action here in Australia, in the Asia-Pacific and, indeed, globally then our oceans will become choked and our precious places will become polluted with plastic. Indeed, global consumption of plastic is on track to triple by 2040.

Eighty per cent of marine debris is plastic and 40 per cent of plastic is single use, with an average lifespan of just 12 minutes. It's an absolute disgrace. It is estimated that at least eight million tonnes of plastic makes its way into our oceans every year, totalling 80 per cent of marine debris. Numerous studies have shown that the majority of plastic pollution found on Australian beaches is produced and consumed locally. We are polluting our own blue backyard. We are only recycling 16 per cent of plastic packaging as of this current moment. So what we have is a global challenge of significant proportion, one which is being, I think it is fair to say, disproportionately contributed to by the Asia-Pacific region. And we have a situation where Australia, as a member of that region, is not only failing to do its part; it is currently disproportionately contributing to the problem. In the face of this global and regional challenge we have this piece of legislation, much vaunted by the Prime Minister and often deployed, in my opinion, as a distraction from the great, howling, corporately funded void. Where more substantive environmental and climate based policy should be we have this legislation around which a big game is talked, around which the Prime Minister likes to draw great attention.

There are some quite fine aspirations and intentions lying behind certain aspects of this bill. It is necessary that we ban the exportation of our waste overseas, and this is the first time that legislation in relation to a national approach to waste has come before the parliament in a decade. But it is very important not to be fooled by the hype and the bluster; this is a massive missed opportunity, and if passed in its current form that missed opportunity will only increase.

If the government was serious about recycling and waste reduction, we would have seen a lot more in this bill, particularly in relation to plastics. Critically, if we were serious about both addressing this problem and doing so in a way that is socially just, putting the responsibility of that addressing fairly and squarely on those who generated it and caused this crisis most, we would see aspects within this legislation that would make corporations responsible for their contribution to this massive problem, to the work and the vandalism environmentally that they have done to our oceans and to our broader natural environment. We see none of these aspects in this legislation.

This legislation seeks to ban the national export of waste while putting in place none of the measures needed to create and support a national recycling industry here in Australia—a national recycling industry which would create thousands upon thousands of good jobs. This is a wasted opportunity that is being wasted on behest of massive corporations that are donors to the Liberal Party—shock, horror, aghast; who'd have thunk it! But it is really worth zeroing back in on the proposition at the heart of this legislation, that being that you can ban the export of these types of waste in the absence of the setting up of an effective national structure to then manage that waste—something which is particularly egregious given that those that understand recycling and waste management have been desperately lobbying the government. Senator Whish-Wilson has informed me on many occasions of the effort and work done by the industry to attempt to get the government to the table ahead of what was a very easily foreseeable decision on behalf of countries like China to stop taking our waste. But the government refused to listen, refused to engage, and now, even today, presents a piece of legislation which doesn't really do the job.

After reaching for a way to clearly explain what is fundamentally proposed in this bill, I ask people to imagine how they would feel and what their view would be should they have complained for a decade or more about having a leaking sewer system in their house and if, after 10 years, a plumber finally comes out to their place and says: 'Oh, you've got a pretty busted pipe there. The solution, in my view, is just to shut off your access to water, shut off your access to the toilet and shit on the floor.' Now, that would not be something that folks would accept, and yet that is the proposition at the heart of this legislation—that we stop sending this stuff overseas—

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Steele-John, I ask you to consider your language and its appropriate use in the chamber, please.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Acting Deputy President. That's the contention at the centre of this bill—that we stop sending our waste overseas and that we keep it here while doing nothing to address the core reasons that it's created and do not a damn thing, not a damn thing, to hold corporations to account for their creation of this waste, for building into the system wasteful processes that make it more difficult to care for and manage waste. You will not see a single line in this bill that talks about product stewardship, one of the central tenets of addressing waste and recycling. There is nowhere near enough emphasis on making sure that corporations that manufacture and profit from the creation of wasteful products actually do their bit in cleaning up the outcome.

I would also like to speak—and I will zero back in on this during the committee stage of the debate, with the leave of my good Tasmanian colleague—on an often overlooked element of this debate, and that is that there are folks in our community for whom certain plastic products are not a mere convenience but indeed a mobility aid. Here, of course, I talk about plastic straws and the need by many disabled people in our community to utilise plastic straws in our consumption of food and beverages and what have you. I said that rather robotically; what I should say is that sometimes you need a plastic straw to be able to go out of an evening and smash a JD with your mates! That's just the way it works. The reality is that the renewable, recyclable equivalents of straws—reusable straws, for instance—are not yet up to scratch to be able to replace their plastic counterparts. There are also challenges when it comes to the safety of some straw replacements. Metal straws, for instance, might result in harm to folks in our community who experience periodic spasmodic muscle episodes.

As you can imagine, we in the Greens have heard very clearly from the disability community about the need to address these issues appropriately in any legislation in these areas, recognising that fundamentally, centrally, the need, the pressure—the emphasis, the expectation—to create alternative solutions should fall upon manufacturers. It should not be the responsibility of disabled people to advocate their right to be able to consume food and liquid like the rest of the community. Although we must limit the use of plastic products to the greatest degree possible, we must do so while continuing to allow disabled people to use some of them as the necessary mobility aid that they are for so many people. That is why, within the amendments being moved by Senator Whish-Wilson in the course of this debate, there will be targeted exemptions created for the purpose of allowing these products to still be accessed and used by disabled people when they need them. I shall talk in more detail about those exemptions during the committee stage, but, for the second reading period of the debate, I think I shall leave it there.

Perin Davey (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to reinforce to the chamber that the Australian government is introducing the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and related bills because it does take responsibility for our waste very seriously. We take this issue so seriously we are one of the first nations to have actually stepped out and said, 'We are going stop exporting waste; we are going to deal with it on shore.' To do this, we need these bills to pass, and I am absolutely amazed that the Greens aren't backing us 100 per cent in doing this. This legislation implements that export ban so we stop exporting our problems to other nations.

But that is what we see time and time again from the Greens. They want us to stop mining clean-energy, high-efficiency coal on shore so that we leave the responsibility of meeting the international demand for coal to other nations, who produce dirtier coal. They want us to stop sensible forestry in this nation, where we have a sustainable long-term forestry policy; they'd rather have us export forestry so we see massive clearing in other nations. We have to stop exporting our problems. We have to continue, in this nation, to implement policies that increase our sustainability, both for our environment and for our international obligations, and also for our industry.

This export ban that we're proposing for waste glass will commence from 1 January 2021, and all waste export bans will be in place by July 2024. This legislation will also incorporate the existing Product Stewardship Act 2011, with improvements to encourage companies to take greater responsibility for the waste they generate, including through better product design and increased recovery and re-use of waste materials. What in that is going to be a problem? This legislation will lead to increased recycling and increased remanufacturing of waste materials, which will transform our waste and recycling industries, boost jobs and, importantly, provide massive opportunities for regional areas that have the space to develop waste-recycling and waste-remanufacturing warehouses and the capacity to deal with it. This legislation is good for the environment, good for jobs and good for regions. I'm still struggling to see what the problem with this legislation is.

The important thing about this legislation, when we're talking about the recycling and waste reduction components of it, is that it provides a framework for three kinds of product stewardship schemes: voluntary, co-regulatory and mandatory. The voluntary product stewardship scheme drives action to reduce the negative impacts of waste from products and materials on the environment. Again, where's the problem in that? It is a good thing. It also provides accreditation of voluntary product stewardship schemes. A member of such an arrangement can use the product stewardship logo on their products to signal to the community that they are taking responsibility for the waste their product generates.

The co-regulatory product stewardship scheme is a combination of industry action and government regulation where government sets the minimum outcomes and operational requirements while the industry has some discretion about how those requirements and outcomes are achieved. The National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme is a successful and well-established co-regulatory product stewardship scheme that will continue under this legislation.

The mandatory product stewardship scheme can require a person, such as a manufacturer, importer or distributor of a product, to take specific actions in relation to a product. The mandatory requirements may be imposed where there is a high level of environmental or human health risk.

The government has consulted widely on this legislation. The Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment have conducted this consultation over the past couple of years on these measures, including discussion papers, industry consultation and a regulatory impact statement. Now we have finally have the bills before us, and I can see no reason not to support these bills. I commend them to the chamber.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank senators for their contributions in the debate on these bills: the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020, the Recycling and Waste Reduction (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2020, the Recycling and Waste Reduction Charges (General) Bill 2020, the Recycling and Waste Reduction Charges (Customs) Bill 2020 and the Recycling and Waste Reduction Charges (Excise) Bill 2020. They represent, across the bills, a package of legislation that implements the commitment agreed by all Australian governments, working cooperatively at a state, territory and Commonwealth level, to ban unprocessed waste exports, to strengthen existing product stewardship legislation and to provide a national legislative framework for recycling and waste reduction, now and into the future. This will enable Australia to realise the full economic value of waste and to maximise the ability of our waste management and recycling sector to recover and remanufacture waste materials.

These bills will see significant and positive benefit through the creation of jobs, growing the Australian economy and, crucially, reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfill. The supporting Recycling Modernisation Fund, announced by our government in July, will see a $1 billion transformation of Australia's domestic waste and recycling facilities, building a sustainable waste and recycling sector to process the waste streams we've been sending offshore. As our Prime Minister has said, it's our waste; it's our responsibility.

These bills introduced by our government seek to turbocharge Australia's approach to product stewardship, to develop a circular economy by encouraging businesses to take greater responsibility to reduce the environmental footprint of products across their life cycle. Our government is taking specific action in relation to plastics waste. Since the waste export ban was agreed, under the leadership of Prime Minister Morrison, exports of plastics waste alone have fallen by around 5,000 tonnes per month. That is the equivalent of the weight of the Royal Australian Navy's two largest ships, each year, being saved in terms of plastics waste exports from Australia. Our government is developing a national plastics plan informed by the ideas and suggestions raised at the first ever National Plastics Summit in March. The plan will include initiatives to reduce plastics pollution by targeting every single stage of the plastics life cycle and will recognise that everyone, including governments, industry and the community, has a vital role to play in managing our plastics waste.

Under the National Product Stewardship Investment Fund, $10.5 million will be provided to support 15 projects to reduce waste and improve recycling. One of these projects, run by the Australian Food and Grocery Council, will recycle and reprocess 190,000 tonnes of soft plastic packaging per year. That's the equivalent of almost 200 billion chocolate wrappers. That's even beyond the capacity of my nine-year-old daughter or her younger sibling! Under the government's $1.1 million funded national consumer education program, the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation will deliver a series of campaigns to improve consumer and household recycling awareness and behaviours to improve the resource recovery outcomes for packaging. The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation are also working to gain government accreditation for a voluntary product stewardship scheme for packaging.

I note that the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee considered the provisions in these bills in detail and recommended they be passed. I thank the committee for their work and their support and their consideration of these important aspects. The committee made three additional recommendations: first, that the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment continue its engagement with state, territory and local governments, as well as with industry, business and environmental stakeholders, in the implementation of these bills, particularly with reference to costs, penalties and the proposed 'naming and shaming' criteria.

I can confirm that the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment will continue to work closely with a broad range of stakeholders to implement each phase of the waste export ban and to further the product stewardship outcomes sought through this legislation. This will include consultation to ensure stakeholders understand the minister's expectations on recommended actions and time frames for products listed on the minister's priority list. Organisations will be given ample opportunity to do the right thing prior to being named and shamed. The department will also provide guidance on potential compliance action and penalties for breaches of the legislation.

As part of the 2020-21 budget handed down in October this year, our government announced that it would defer introducing fees and charges by setting them at zero dollars when the regulation starts. This is to provide relief for businesses dealing with the economic impacts of COVID-19 and to give businesses time to adjust to the new regulations. This will mean that exporters will not have to pay for an assessment of a waste export licence or to make an export declaration for the first 2½ years of the scheme. The department will instead start recovering the costs of administering the regulation from 1 July 2023 and will prepare a cost-recovery implementation statement in 2022. This will allow for meaningful consultation with stakeholders on the proposed approach to cost recovery and the amount of any charges.

We should recognise that our government is proceeding with these very important reforms and measures to better ensure that Australia takes responsibility for its waste in the environment of a global pandemic. Notwithstanding the changes that the world has seen through the course of 2020, we have maintained momentum and commitment to these reforms while recognising, through that Senate committee process and as a result of the advice coming forward, that we do need to be mindful of the costs and impacts on Australian businesses as well. We need to make sure that we get outcomes in waste and recycling but not in a way that is at the expense of Australian business competitiveness and capability. In fact, we need to do so in a way that builds, as our government has sought to, jobs and opportunities for more Australians in the management of waste and recycling.

The second recommendation of the Senate inquiry was that the Commonwealth have a specific focus on achieving alignment of infrastructure, investment and data when working with state, territory and local governments to coordinate the implementation of the bills and broader reform to waste management and recycling. Our government is working closely with states, territories and local governments to implement a program of waste reform measures with a view to aligning infrastructure, investment and data. This includes supporting consistency around single-use plastic bans and delivering agreed national data and reporting improvements.

Our $190 million Recycling Modernisation Fund will leverage some $600 million of co-investment from state and territory governments and from Australian industry for critical waste infrastructure. I welcome and applaud the drive and cooperation that we are finding from states and territories and from Australian industry to invest in the types of recycling capabilities and plant capacity that are necessary for the vision and reforms we're applying to be able to be delivered and implemented in a timely way and that ensure that we do achieve the optimal outcomes of reduced waste going to landfill, reduced waste going overseas and enhanced recycling in a way that builds long-term profitable, commercially viable industries that reuse those products.

The type of co-investment from the Recycling Modernisation Fund working with state and territory governments and industry will create an estimated 10,000 jobs and divert 10 million tonnes of waste from landfill. This will ensure that Australia has the necessary waste management and recycling capacity in place by 2024, when the full waste export ban comes into effect.

The National Waste Policy Action Plan also features several actions where the Commonwealth will work closely with the state, territory and local governments. These include supporting consistency around single-use plastics bans, delivering agreed national data and reporting improvements, and aligning education efforts around reducing food waste. Many jurisdictions have shown different approaches in leadership when it comes to tackling questions like single-use plastics bans. These initiatives from states and territories are important, but to ensure we get both the optimal environmental outcomes and the most efficient and effective regulatory measures in place that minimise negative impacts on the economy and maximise potential positive impacts on the economy, cooperation and national harmonisation on issues like single-use plastics bans are crucial—as, indeed, is ensuring that the sharing and knowledge that can come from enhanced national data and reporting capabilities will help to drive investment in the right sectors of our recycling industry and will help to ensure that the necessary industry advances are achieved.

The third recommendation that came from the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications investigation of these bills was for the government to expedite consideration of a cost-benefit analysis of large infrastructure projects, including mandatory targets for the use of a percentage of recycled material. The cost-benefit analysis that underpinned the former Council of Australian Governments decision regulation impact statement for the waste export ban assumed $250 million of investments in new technologies and infrastructure and some $100 million to support domestic demand for recycled products. This analysis found that the waste export ban and associated investment in infrastructure is expected to see the Australian economy grow by $3.6 billion in turnover and $1.5 billion in GDP over a 20-year period.

This is a clear demonstration of the type of virtuous cycle that we seek to achieve through these reforms and this investment that has the Australian government taking responsibility and Australians taking responsibility for Australian waste—that we cease the practice of unnecessary export of that waste into our region and pushing those environmental and ecological pressures onto other nations in other locations and instead take back responsibility. In doing so, we seek to embrace the potential that technology provides for us to be able to reuse, recycle and generate enhanced economic outcomes as a result of that. That, of course, is the consistent theme right across our government's environmental policies and approaches—our determination to invest in technology and capability that achieves environmental outcomes in a manner that supports Australian jobs and Australian livelihoods, rather than taxes or takes away from them.

The Commonwealth Procurement Rules, I'm pleased to advise, are being amended to strengthen the requirement to consider environmental sustainability in the use of recycled content when determining value for money in purchasing decisions. In fact, I can advise they have been amended; as finance minister I can recollect publishing those updated Commonwealth Procurement Rules at the end of last week.

I understand that there were four additional recommendations made through that Senate inquiry by the Australian Greens. I note Senator Whish-Wilson has proposed to amend the bills in the Senate to implement these recommendations through amendment sheets 1029, 1043 and 1052. The government does not agree with these recommendations and, as such, does not support the amendments flagged by the Australian Greens. The fourth amendment—that the bill be reviewed five years after its commencement—I'm pleased to inform the Senate, was already implemented through a government amendment to the bill in the House of Representatives.

It's my pleasure to commend these bills to the chamber. These are important reforms that ensure that Australia is well placed in terms of our ability to deliver an enhanced recycling and waste reduction regime and to do it in a way that creates jobs and enhances and delivers on our environmental commitments to the region in which we live.

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the second reading amendment moved by Senator Hanson-Young be agreed to.