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

In summary, these bills are a massive opportunity for free enterprise to fix an unprecedented by-product of human progress. I urge the CSIRO to work with industry to produce biodegradable and compostable plastics that allow Australians to simply switch from environmentally damaging materials to environmentally friendly materials.

The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and associated bills are a win for the environment, a win for Australia and a win for the countries we have been dumping our rubbish into. The extent of this win depends on the response from the CSIRO and from industry. I'd like to take this opportunity to address the fact that the environment can be an opportunity—a huge opportunity—for high productivity and for a competitive advantage. Let's consider the evolution, for example, of management attitudes in business and society's attitudes to safety, quality and the environment. One has followed the other. Safety, initially, was seen as a cost, a burden. But, incidents, whether they injure people or are just simply near misses, are waste. Removing that waste, removing incidents and near misses, improves productivity and profit. This has driven me in my career in management. Improving safety reduces costs, improves productivity and improves profit. That's now accepted, although still not widely followed.

Secondly, there's quality. Quality was seen, initially, as a cost. High quality came with extra cost. Yet the Japanese miracle in manufacturing in the seventies and eighties turned that around, because the Japanese understood that defects are waste. Removing those defects improved quality, reduced costs, improved productivity and improved profit. This has driven my work in improving processes at work—in workplaces and in leadership processes. Quality is now understood to lead to lower costs, and that is why the lowest-cost producers in the world in manufactured goods have the highest quality.

The same cannot yet be said for the environment. Environmental issues, sadly, are still seen quite often as a cost. Yet looking after the environment removes waste and improves productivity and profit. Real environmental problems, such as real pollution of air, water and soil, add to cost. Take the example of the removal of car exhaust pollution. Car exhaust pollution in California is now one-thousandth what it was in the seventies. That has led to increased efficiency in the use of fuel, lower pollution, lower costs for motorists, lower costs for producers and lower costs for the cities of California.

Yet today there are still too many fabricated environmental problems, nonproblems cloaked as environmental issues. Making up environmental problems is physically and morally reprehensible. It hurts people. It adds needless cost, which the poor pay disproportionately. For example, labelling carbon dioxide as a pollutant is dishonest and contradicts science and nature. Car pollution consists of nitrous oxides, sulphur oxides and particulates. These were cleaned up in California and cleaned up in our country. Now we have carbon dioxide fabricated as a pollutant, and that is dishonest and contradicts science and nature. Carbon dioxide is nature's trace atmospheric gas, essential to all life on this planet. It cannot be a pollutant. We cannot affect the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the empirical evidence shows that. It is not a pollutant.

I call on the government to do its work on hydrocarbon fuels and to understand natural climate variability and how it has been fabricated dishonestly by the Greens and others into climate change due to human activity, when that is false. This distracts from real and serious environmental problems. So, while I compliment the government for its work on plastics and removing plastics from the pollution stream, we need to buck up when it comes to carbon dioxide. Claiming that carbon dioxide is a pollutant leads to needlessly higher electricity prices. The noted and reputable economist Alan Moran calculates, using the government's own data, that it adds $13 billion a year to the cost of electricity in additional costs, that it adds $1,300 to the cost of electricity to the typical household and that 2.3 jobs are lost for every so-called green job that is created by these subsidies. This is hurting the poor. As a result of this climate change nonsense, we have the theft of property rights from farmers. That increases food costs, which hurts the poor. This climate scam is hurting the poor; it is antihuman; it increases costs needlessly, and disproportionately for the poor and those who cannot afford it; it increases waste right through our society; it decreases productivity; and it decreases wealth.

When ideology is wrapped as an environmental issue, as it is with the climate scam, then everyone suffers, particularly when the real aim of this climate scam is simply to control people. Everyone hurts. We need to get back to real and serious environmental issues. This climate scam is distracting us, our money, our time, our attention, our interest, our energy and our effort from real and serious environmental issues.

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and associated bills, which were introduced to the House of Representatives on 27 August this year. The aim of this bill is to regulate the export of waste materials in line with the commitment of the Council of Australian Governments, COAG, earlier this year to ban the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres. Only those products that have been processed into a value added material and will be reused or remanufactured overseas will be permitted for export. This legislation will also manage the environmental, health and safety impacts of products, particularly the impacts associated with the disposal of waste products, and provide for voluntary co-regulatory and mandatory product stewardship schemes.

Planet Ark research shows that 51 per cent of Australia's household waste is recycled, which is on par with recycling rates in many northern European countries. Even better, Australia has been a world leader in newspaper recycling for years, but we have a way to go with electronic waste recycling. E-waste is increasing at three times the rate of other waste in Australia. Voluntary industry programs, like Cartridges 4 Planet Ark and MobileMuster, have been providing recycling options for many years now, but we've been slow to provide recycling services for televisions, computers and batteries. These bills mean we will be slow no more.

COAG's commitment to banning the export of certain waste materials was target 1 of the National Waste Policy Action Plan 2019. This plan was developed to drive change within industry, businesses, governments and the community to turn waste into a reusable commodity. The strategy to phase out the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres was released in March this year and sets out both the challenges and opportunities presented by the ban and the longer term changes ahead for Australia's waste and recycling sector. The ban on the export of waste products starts with waste glass from 1 January 2021, followed by mixed plastics from 1 July 2021, whole used tyres from 1 December 2021, single resin or polymer plastics from 1 July 2022 and mixed or unsorted paper and cardboard from 1 July 2024.

These bills encourage a circular economy for Australia's waste through the enhancement of voluntary product stewardship. Such an economy will support businesses to realise the full value of recyclable materials as a sustainable resource, with full consideration of the product's entire life cycle. The bills replace the framework contained within the Product Stewardship Act 2011. This act will be repealed by the Recycling and Waste Reduction (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2020.

Earlier this year I visited the Dulverton Waste Management facility at Latrobe in Tasmania's north-west. This facility is already following the recycling and reuse ideals we are aiming for in this legislation. Dulverton provides sustainable landfill and organics recycling services for more than 80 commercial, industrial and government clients across Tasmania. It was constructed in 1995 at a former clay quarry site under the joint authority of four north-west councils—the Central Coast, Devonport City, Kentish and Latrobe councils.

Around 40 per cent of the waste volume at the Dulverton Waste Management facility is organic. It is recycled into nutrient-rich compost used by Tasmanian nurseries, landscapers, public land managers, vineyards, flower and berry growers, orchards and dairy farmers. This recycled compost product stimulates plant growth, increases soil microbial life, unlocks soil nutrients for plants, improves soil salinity and sodicity—the amount of salt held in soil—and increases the soil's water-holding capacity.

Dulverton also collaborates with waste management groups throughout the state and works with businesses and industry bodies to raise awareness of waste avoidance and recycling best practices. The Australian government has made targeted investments to build a stronger Australian recycling industry and create more jobs as a result of these waste management reforms. A number of complementary measures have been introduced to support the objectives of these bills, including $190 million for a new Recycling Modernisation Fund. This fund will leverage $600 million of recycling infrastructure reinvestment, creating more than 10,000 jobs and diverting more than 10 million tonnes of waste from landfill to make useful products when combined with activity from the National Waste Policy Action Plan.

Despite comments made by those on the other side in earlier contributions, I'm very pleased to advise the Senate that an $11 million joint recycling agreement between the Australian and Tasmanian governments was announced in Launceston recently. This landmark agreement, signed by federal Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley, and Tasmania's Minister for Environment and Parks, Roger Jaensch, will deliver a $16 million boost for the state's recycling industry, creating jobs and reducing pressure on the environment. This partnership is part of the Australian government's $190 million Recycling Modernisation Fund and will leverage a further $5.5 million from Tasmanian industry via matched investment from businesses who will turn the high-quality recycled material into new products.

Other complementary measures supporting the bill's objectives include: $20 million for the National Product Stewardship Investment Fund to grow new and existing schemes, which will contribute to meeting our national target of recovering 80 per cent of our waste resources by 2030; $35 million to implement Commonwealth commitments under Australia's National Waste Policy Action Plan, which sets the direction for waste management policy and recycling in Australia until 2030; $24.6 million for Commonwealth commitments to improve our national waste data so it can measure recycling outcomes and track progress against our national waste targets; $20 million through a special round of the cooperative research centre's projects to find new and innovative solutions to plastic recycling and waste, including new ways of incorporating recycled plastics in manufacturing and construction; strengthening the Commonwealth procurement guidelines to enable any procurement undertaken by a Commonwealth agency to consider environmental sustainability and the use of recycled content when determining value for money, because by using our purchasing power we can generate demand and encourage innovation; and also working with the states and territories to develop national standards and specifications for the use of recycled content in a broad range of capital works projects.

We want to stop exporting untreated and unprocessed waste that is likely to have a negative impact on the environment or harm human health in the country that receives this waste. Our waste management and recycling sector will collect, recover, recycle and reuse waste and convert it into new products as a result. Through better product design, manufacture, distribution and use, we will all take greater responsibility for environmental impacts. Australia is not only taking responsibility for its waste but also ensuring this waste is managed effectively and transformed into a resource we can use again and again. We've turned the tables on the thought that waste is just an environmental product problem that needs to be solved, instead seeing it as an opportunity to design, manufacture and create new products and foster new industries. Reforming our practices around unprocessed waste products will lead to a fundamental change in attitude that will positively affect our bottom line. Waste management and recycling practices that stem from this bill are expected to add $3.6 billion to the Australian economy's turnover and generate $1.5 billion in economic activity over the next 20 years. In addition to ensuring we are recycling and reusing our waste products, the bill will set out obligations for manufacturers, importers and distributors in relation to those products. This legislation also sets out accreditation arrangements for voluntary product stewardship, which will help Australian consumers understand the impact of certain products so they can make better choices when purchasing and disposing of products.

Recycling and reusing products is something Australians care deeply about. To understand this, we only need to look at the uptake of local government kerbside recycling programs, the popularity of bottle-recycling schemes and the number of people who spend their weekends combing through tip shops and travelling between garage sales to find products they can upcycle for their homes or resell at market stalls and in shops. People spend time sorting and separating their recyclable paper, glass and plastic packaging to put into the recycling bins or taking products to their local waste collection facilities, and they want to know these products are going to be repurposed effectively, not dumped in an ever-growing landfill facility or sent overseas. The export bans outlined in the bill are our way of ensuring these products will be reused productively.

Recycling benefits our planet, our economy and ourselves. Reusing products decreases the amount of raw materials needed, and the manufacture of new products from recycled materials uses less energy. Recycling creates more jobs than landfill does, and new industries created through reuse boost the economy. We are taking responsibility for our waste by regulating the way products are used, from initial design and manufacture through to reuse or recycling into a different product. This commitment will expand the capacity of our industries, as well as open opportunities for new product ideas, new technologies and new markets for these products. It will ensure our resources will be used in sustainable ways for future generations. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak on one of the most important issues currently facing our nation: protecting our environment for today, for tomorrow and into the future for generation after generation. A key part of this commitment is to stop the waste. That is key to our protection of the environment on the land, in the air, along our coastlines and in our precious oceans. The Morrison government is committed to bringing to an end the 645,000 tonnes of unprocessed plastic, paper, glass and tyres which Australia ships annually overseas. The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and related bills will provide a vital phased approach to ensure that this becomes a reality. As the Prime Minister said so succinctly: it is our waste; it is our responsibility.'

I'm incredibly proud of the many ways in which the Morrison government is committed to protecting our environment. Whether it's meeting and beating our climate targets or supporting local environmental community initiatives, this is a government which takes the practical environmental actions which are required. By way of example, the government released the Quarterly update of Australia's national greenhouse gas inventory: June 2020a very short time ago. The quarterly update confirms that Australia has beaten its 2020 target for lower emissions—the target period being 2013-20—by 459 million tonnes, an overachievement on the previous record, being that between 2008 and 2012. This is an increase on the previous estimate of 411 million tonnes published in December 2019. Australia's overachievement on its 2020 target is due in large part to significant structural declines in emissions from the electricity and agriculture sectors. In 2019-20, emissions in the National Electricity Market, which is Australia's largest electricity grid, fell 5.3 per cent to a new record low. Of course, this has also been driven very substantially by Australia's incredible investment in renewable energy—some $30 billion since 2017—as we continue to deploy new solar and wind at a rate that is 10 times faster than the global average. Recent advice from the Clean Energy Regulator is that this trend is expected to continue in the coming years. This is evidence of real action by a government with practical, real solutions.

Labor, in contrast, remains committed to its reckless targets. We have seen in recent weeks the war within the Labor Party over climate and energy policy. Labor is all at sea. Independent modelling by BAEconomics shows Labor's 45 per cent emissions reduction target and its 50 per cent renewable energy target would drive up wholesale power prices by 58 per cent, cost the economy $472 billion, reduce real wages by $9,000 per household and slash 336,000 jobs. At least there are some in Labor who have worked this out and worked out the cost of the reckless policies which Labor, of course, took to the last election and which were soundly defeated. Yet it is very concerning that much of Labor's true thinking was revealed by its Labor Environment Action Network, which said: 'High prices are not a market failure. They are proof of the market working well.'

Importantly, the Morrison government's approach with these bills before us today harnesses a cooperative approach with business and other levels of government, along with the community and individuals. Minister Sussan Ley said in her second reading speech:

This bill implements the agreement by all of Australia's governments to ban the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres. It also incorporates the framework of the existing Product Stewardship Act 2011. It includes improvements to better regulate and encourage our businesses—those that design, manufacture, distribute and use products—to take greater responsibility for their environmental impacts.

And that's a key point: governments can do so much, but in order for us to reduce our waste, in order for us to embrace the circular economy, we have to work together with every single business which creates waste and with every single family in every household across Australia. These bills is a very important part of our very significant efforts to transform the nation's waste and recycling sector. It says that we have to take responsibility for what we produce and that the more we can recycle the less goes into landfill and the better we are now and into the future.

The Commonwealth's 2018 National Waste Policy identifies five overarching circular economy waste principles. The first is to avoid waste, and that is by prioritising waste avoidance; encouraging efficient use, re-use and repair; and designing products to minimise waste so that they are made to last and so that we can more easily recover materials from products which are produced. A second important principle is to improve resource recovery—that is, to improve material collection systems and processes for recycling and improve the quality of recycled material we produce. The third principle is to increase the use of recycled material and build demand and markets for recycled products—one person's rubbish is another person's treasure! That ability for us to see much of what we produce as being recycled throughout our economy is a very important principle. The fourth principle is the better management of material flows to benefit human health, the environment and the economy. And the fifth principle is to improve information to support innovation, guide investment and enable informed consumer decisions. All of these principles make good environmental sense, and they are key to tackling the problem before us today.

Our government, led by Prime Minister Morrison, is to be congratulated for its unwavering commitment to pursuing better environmental outcomes for all Australians. The export ban will be phased in, starting with glass on 1 January 2021; then including mixed plastics, whole used tyres and single-resin, or polymer, plastics; and culminating in July 2024 when mixed and unsorted paper and cardboard will be included. The export ban would only apply to unprocessed waste, which allows for the processing of waste materials within Australia for subsequent export and use in overseas manufacturing.

Minister Ley has made it very clear that this offers an economic opportunity for Australia, saying:

The waste export ban is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform our waste management and recycling sector to collect, recycle, reuse and convert waste into a resource—

a resource we can continue to use as a nation over and over. These reforms are expected to see the Australian economy turn over an additional $3.6 billion and potentially generate $1.5 billion in additional economic activity over the next 20 years. So this is a big win for both the environment and our economy.

We recognise that, if action is not taken, scientists estimate that in 30 years time the weight of plastics in our oceans will exceed the weight of the fish in the oceans, and that's a pretty horrifying thought. I know where I live, in south-west Victoria, including in the wonderful electorate of Corangamite, that is a very important priority. We want to make sure that our oceans are as clean as they possibly can be, and in communities where I live throughout the Corangamite electorate—a magnificent part of the world, as we know—there is a really strong and important focus on reducing plastic in our oceans.

Australians create around 67 million tonnes of waste each year. We want to see less waste going to landfill and ending up in oceans and more being reused and recycled. We are building Australia's domestic recycling capability through our $167 million Australian recycling investment plan. This plan will increase Australia's recycling rates, tackle plastic waste and litter, accelerate work on a new battery recycling scheme and halve food waste by 2030. I'm also very pleased that microbeads are being rapidly phased out: 94 per cent of cosmetic and personal care products in Australia are already microbead free.

National environmental initiatives are vital, but so are local environmental initiatives, and I was very pleased recently to join with the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority to announce some very important local environmental programs for south-west Victoria, including the $6 million Wild Otways Initiative, which includes a $1 million community environmental grants program, and that's been, of course, steered through Minister Ley's office. This is a wonderful opportunity for local environment groups to make an application for funding to support a local environmental project, whether it be programs to improve weed and pest animal control, fencing and access track construction or other improvement works, and wildlife habitat improvement works. So, for those who are reading this Hansard or listening to this debate and are interested in protecting our environment, I would absolutely commend this local project, which is a result of the Morrison government's commitment to our local environment. Of course, that was a commitment made before the last federal election. It was not matched by Labor, I note, which was pretty disappointing. These grants will provide an amount of funding between $5,000 and $50,000 each year for up to two years. So they are very substantial local grants and are a really good example of how local initiatives do matter.

This recycling and waste reduction bill represents an effective and cooperative government, business and community approach to protecting our environment. I'm very pleased that the private sector has shown a willingness to be part of the solution at Australia's first National Plastics Summit, hosted by this government in March. We saw a number of very major pledges from leading companies, including the Pact Group, Nestle, McDonalds, Coca-Cola and Coles, all of which, of course, produce an enormous amount of waste. It is obviously important—very important—that we see that sort of commitment from our large businesses and companies around Australia. So, to every business, large and small: please have a look at what we are doing to support waste reduction, recycling and the circular economy. We are absolutely determined, as a government, to protect Australia's precious environment, to reduce waste and to embrace our circular economy. Our commitment in this bill is another example of our commitment to the environment, and I commend this bill and related bills to the Senate.

Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and associated bills. I want to particularly acknowledge the work that my colleague Senator Whish-Wilson has done through his extensive advocacy on this issue, his work in multiple inquiries on waste and the detailed amendments that he has circulated and been negotiating on across the parliament with regard to these bills. Senator Whish-Wilson has been on the case of waste management and the need for better waste management the whole time he has been in the Senate.

As we said in our additional comments to the committee report, the Greens feel these bills are a step in the right direction. But it will be a missed opportunity if this legislation is passed in its current form without substantive amendments. We recognise that there are some very positive elements in these bills, but there is much more that needs to be done. In particular the idea of an export ban is great, and it has been really good to be here this morning to hear government senators talk about their commitment to recycling, to waste management and to no longer shipping all of our waste offshore. It's a good start. But where we think we particularly need to have more action is in the various targets that are set in these bills; they need to be mandatory. It is not going to be good enough just to have voluntary targets.

Recycling and waste management is an absolutely serious issue, particularly with regard to plastic waste. As Senator Whish-Wilson has already outlined in his contribution, 40 per cent of the plastic used here is single use. It has an average life span of 12 minutes. That's absolutely shocking. Only 16 per cent of that plastic is being recycled; that means 84 per cent is going elsewhere, as waste in the oceans, in our bushlands, in our streets or in landfills. Wherever it is, it's not being reused. It's a waste, and it's having an impact on the environment. We know that 80 per cent of marine debris is plastic and that global consumption of plastic could triple by 2040. There is a horrific amount of plastic in our oceans already, and, tragically, more is on its way unless we act. This matters for all of us; it matters for us, for the fish that we eat, for the oceans that we swim in and for the beaches that we walk on. Without urgent, drastic action, the situation is only going to get worse.

Recycling is something that really matters to people. It's something that people engage with every day. People want to do the right thing. People want to feel that they are contributing to creating a cleaner and a better environment that we all share. They know that they should do the right thing. Essentially, the role of government is to make things easier for them. So we need legislation that has the government doing its bit and businesses doing their bit so that it makes it easier for everybody. That means you need to have mandatory measures in place so that all businesses then know where they stand. You can't have some businesses playing the situation off against each other.

I cannot understand the reluctance to implement mandatory targets when we basically have the industry saying: 'Look, it's not going to cost us any more. We've got some quite ambitious targets. We think we're going to meet them.' Why not make them mandatory? Why not put in legislation that this is where we are absolutely committed to heading? We have mandatory targets and mandatory standards across all other parts of our lives. Whether it's in health and safety, whether it's in sporting competitions, whether it's in industrial relations or whether it's in human rights, we have standards that are absolute commitments that we have to meet. I cannot see why those standards should be voluntary rather than mandatory in the critical area of protecting our environment.

Plus, having mandatory standards gives certainty to business. It makes it clear that those are the standards that they are going to reach, and it gives business the confidence to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars that are going to be needed in the circular economy. It's the same situation we are in with the lack of certainty about investing in renewable energy, with all of the toing and froing and with businesses not knowing where they stand. They are saying that that is the reason there hasn't been as much investment as there otherwise would have been. The same will go here: it's not going to be good enough just to have the export ban; you need to give businesses certainty to invest in the industries that are going to be part of the circular economy.

People are aware of how damaging plastic waste is, and we know that lots of people have taken action to try and remove plastic from their lives altogether. They want to see government working with them to make it easier for them. Like so many other people, I try and reduce the amount of plastic that comes into my household. I bring my own cloth bags, reuse plastic bags, wash plastic bags and resist buying takeaway food if it comes in single-use plastic containers, and I know there are millions of Australians like me who are just as passionate. Of course, I recycle everything I can, including plastic packaging and soft plastics. But at the moment it's hard work, because we don't have an industry set up to be using that plastic. We don't have the recycling industries. We know currently with the drop in the amount we've been able to export, with countries saying, 'No, we don't want your plastic waste anymore,' the market for recycled plastics has collapsed. Local governments have stopped collecting the amount of plastics that they used to, because there's just not anywhere for them to go. I now bring my mother's plastic containers, which she gets with her Meals on Wheels, home from her place because her local government is no longer recycling them. Basically, you've got to be committed to doing that and committed to the recycling of soft plastics, which you've got to take off yourself and take to the supermarket. We need to be making it easier for people. We need the government to be working with the community and working with industry, and that means having the mandatory targets. It means doing more than what is set out in this legislation.

Making best use of our resources and reusing and recycling is not just about plastics. There has been a lot of focus on plastics. Urgent action is needed in another area: we need more action to encourage the recycling and the reuse of paper products. That will have a direct impact on protecting our forests. Five years ago, in 2015, I moved a motion calling on the government to ensure that government agencies were using 100 per cent recycled paper. Of course, the response was some waffle about one agency, of the many across the entire Commonwealth, that was using 100 per cent recycled paper. They didn't address the real issue, which was using the procurement power of the Commonwealth to support paper recycling. It's tragic, because if we had used that power of procurement and, again, if we had mandatory targets that said, 'This is the level of recycling we are going to have,' it would have directly impacted on the amount of wood pulp for paper that we needed to get out of our native forests.

We are continuing to devastate our native forests, primarily for woodchips for pulp, whether it's for here in Australia or for export overseas, when we have paper in waste streams going to waste. We've got a situation where we are still continuing to log our mountain ash forests in the Central Highlands of Victoria, home to the critically endangered Leadbeater's possum, to feed the pulp and paper mill at Maryvale, the Nippon mill in the Latrobe Valley, and yet they've got a recycled paper line there that is underused. If we had procurement from this Commonwealth government saying, '100 per cent of the paper being used in Commonwealth agencies needs to be recycled,' that would enable that production to lift and it would enable us to be getting less of the pulp from our native forests. These things have consequences. These things are connected, and there are actions that people want to see being taken that government is in a position to actually implement.

Think of the situation that our forests are currently in. Last summer—we're heading into another summer—the devastating bushfires wreaked havoc on our native forests. The impact on our forests from fire was the biggest ever to any continent in the world. Places that have never burnt before were aflame because of the hotter temperatures drying them out. Lives were lost. Homes burnt to the ground. Our firefighters were working days on end, protecting lives around the country. Our forests are under incredible threat from the climate crisis. But still, after last summer, the Liberal Party and National Party are in denial. It wasn't the time to talk about our climate crisis; it was too soon, they said. Well, it's a year later, we're heading into another summer, and we're still waiting for a meaningful acknowledgement from them of the climate crisis. We are still waiting for meaningful action on climate, and this is connected with what we're talking about today, because there is a suite of actions that need to take place in order to protect our environment. You can't get up and give fine-sounding words about your commitment to recycling without seeing that these issues are all interconnected. Yes, you need to be taking action on recycling, but it's not enough just to have fine-sounding words and voluntary targets. You need to be addressing the pressures on our environment across the board, and that means taking action on our climate crisis.

Going back to forests, instead of taking action on our climate crisis, instead of saying we're going to have mandatory targets for paper recycling, they're extending the regional forest agreements, extending the devastation of our native forests by years, when they should be shifting all of our forestry into plantations and getting out of native forest logging as quickly as possible to protect our precious wildlife, protect our water supplies and do something about protecting the carbon stores that our forests are. We should be protecting our forests because of, just intrinsically, how beautiful and precious they are in their own right.

Our handling of waste and recycling matters—it matters today for all Australians. We can have the Prime Minister rocking up to the UN and saying that he wants Australia to lead the world in recycling, but we know the truth, and the truth is that Australians are actually tired of being taken for mugs by this Prime Minister. People used to criticise Mr Shorten for having different answers for when he was talking to people in Brunswick from when he was talking to people Townsville. But the truth is that when you base your approach, particularly to the environment, on marketing spin, you're going to be caught in the same trap. The Prime Minister was very happy to make a big, flashy speech at the UN talking about how much he cares about the environment and wants to lead on recycling and waste handling, but it's time he stopped taking Australians for fools. We can see the truth behind the smirk. You cannot be serious about the environment unless you are being serious about the climate crisis.

This is the same Prime Minister who brought his lump of coal into the parliament and sat on the front bench fondling it, like Gollum holding his precious. The truth is that, despite all of Prime Minister Morrison's marketing spin, if you care about the environment, you must act on the climate emergency. The Prime Minister is happy to wear a hard hat and talk about mining coal when in Queensland, but, when he goes to the UN, he won't admit to being one of the world's worst polluters or holding back action on emissions. Instead, he pretends to be doing something by talking about recycling. Well, Australian voters see past it. They see past the spin to the fossil fuel lobby that is propping up the Liberal Party. In conclusion, these bills are a small positive step in the right direction, but so much more needs to be done. More than that, we need, in addition to action on recycling, action on our environment crisis and urgent action on our climate crisis—not tomorrow but today or, even better, yesterday.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and cognate bills. I commend the government's commitment to stop shipping our unprocessed recyclable waste overseas. In the last reported financial year, Australia shipped over 4.44 megatonnes of waste overseas, with 15 per cent of this being unprocessed plastics, glass, paper and cardboard—that is, over 600,000 tonnes. Given the nature of the recent bans on recyclable waste, in particular by some of the largest waste importers including China, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and the Philippines, the issue of exporting waste is no longer a viable management strategy. Waste is a threat to our environment and none more so than waste from our renewable energy industry. I must admit that I did agree with Senator Rice's contribution to this debate, when she said that it should be mandatory for some companies to clean up their waste, none more so than waste from our renewable energy industry. Renewable energy companies, industries and advocates are notorious for hiding and minimising their environmental and human health impacts. They demand and receive exemptions from health and endangered species laws that apply to other industries. They make promises they cannot keep about being able to safely replace fossil fuels that now provide over 80 per cent of the world's global energy.

A few articles have noted some of the serious environmental, toxic, radioactive waste, human health and child labour issues inherent in mining rare earth and cobalt lithium deposits. However, we need quantitative studies—detailed rigorous, honest, transparent, cradle-to-the-grave, peer-reviewed analysis. It's been calculated that replacing 160,000 terawatts of global energy consumption with wind would require 183 million turbines needing roughly: 461 billion tonnes of steel for towers; 460 billion tonnes of steel and concrete for the foundations; 59 million tonnes of copper, steel and alloy for the turbines; 738 million tonnes of neodymium for turbine magnets; 14.7 billion tonnes of steel and complex composite materials for nacelles; and 11 billion tonnes of complex petroleum based composites for rotors and massive quantities of other raw materials. All of this must be mined, processed and manufactured into finished products and shipped around the world. Once the life of these products has ended, they then need to be either disposed of cleanly or recycled. Shipping just the iron ore to build the turbines would require nearly three million voyages in huge ships that would consume 13 billion tonnes of bunker fuel—heavy fuel, at that. Converting that ore to iron and steel would require 473 billion tonnes of coking coal, demanding another 1.2 million sea voyages consuming another six billion tonnes of bunker fuel. For sustainability disciples, does the earth have enough of these raw materials for this transformation?

It gets worse. These numbers do not include the ultra-long transmission lines required to carry electricity from windy locations to distant cities. As I mentioned last week, the cause of the 2009 bushfires was determined to be a fallen transmission line. If we're going to build more transmission lines, are we going to put them underground to reduce the risk of fire breaking out?

Wind turbines and solar panels last just 20 years or less, while coal, gas and nuclear power plants last up to 50 years and require far less land and raw materials. That means we would have to tear down, haul away and replace far more renewable generators twice as often, dispose of or recycle their composite parts and mine, process and ship more ores. Then there are the bird and bat species deaths, the wildlife losses from destroying habitats and the human health impacts from wind turbine noise and flicker. These also need to be examined, fully and honestly, along with the effects of skyrocketing renewable energy prices on every aspect of this transition and of our lives.

Solar panels are far more efficient at turning sunlight into heat than they are at turning sunlight into electricity. Solar panels produce more waste heat per watt than any other power source. In areas where there are large solar plants, temperatures can be as much as four degrees hotter than the surrounding land, forming heat islands. Pilots flying lower than 12,000 feet have been reported as feeling the rising hot air. Plants and animals are the enemy of solar and must be removed from solar plants. Since solar plants require vast amounts of land, usually only available in environmentally sensitive areas, wildlife is devastated. It's also worth pointing out that the CSIRO themselves have predicted that Australia's lithium battery waste could exceed over 100,000 tonnes in less than 20 years. Old lithium batteries are a fire risk and they are full of toxic heavy metals that have a limited life.

I should point out that the Leader of the Opposition, Anthony Albanese, has been accusing this government of playing accounting tricks with the Paris Agreement. If there were ever an accounting trick, it's the fact that the cost of building all these renewables in other countries and the CO2 that's emitted in the production of these renewables aren't included in Australia's targets—and nor, might I add, is recycling or cleaning up these renewables. So, if you want to get serious about where the real accounting trick is, it's that all countries are either in Paris or they're not. What's happening is that a lot of these renewables are being manufactured in non-Paris-committed countries, and those carbon dioxide emissions aren't being included in the countries where that energy's being consumed. So I suggest that the Leader of the Opposition reflect on his comments about accounting tricks, because, if there are any, they arise from the way the Paris Agreement was structured to encourage renewables to be manufactured in countries that do not come under the agreement. Perhaps he might look at other countries rather than try to destroy our productive industries and destroy Australian jobs.

In relation to the existing recycling and collection methods and infrastructure, coupled with the recent international agreements relating to hazardous waste movement and plastic marine debris, as well as the development of foreign policy, current data suggests the export of recycled material would no longer be a cost-effective solution and would damage the economy and the environment in the near future. At the forefront of the heavy reliance on international agreements and policy is the 2018 introduction of restrictions on waste imports in China. In the 2017-18 financial year, China was the largest importer of Australian recyclable waste, importing over 1.3 million tonnes of waste. China's new restrictions have caused large-scale changes to the market, including reducing the price of scrap paper, which was once valued at $124 a tonne, by almost 100 per cent. The price of scrap plastic, once valued at $325 per tonne, has reduced by 78 per cent. The price of cardboard, once valued at $210 per tonne, has reduced by 40 per cent. With many other South-East Asian countries reaching capacity and considering new restrictions on recyclable material, it is vital that the government moves away from the export of waste and towards domestic recyclable waste management, as is proposed by this legislation. The export of recyclable waste is no longer a good investment. If nothing is done, it is likely that we will see the export of such waste being valued at less than worthless, leaving Australia with a waste problem that has no prior established solution.

However, this is not just an economic issue. I have no doubt that everyone in this chamber has seen footage of the plastic filled stomachs found in some of our marine birds, and countless images of marine species becoming trapped and strangled by plastic pollution. I guarantee everyone has seen footage of a turtle hopelessly stuck after consuming plastic pollution in the ocean. This is a moral issue and, more importantly, a strong environmental issue. Contrary to the belief of those opposite, I am actually an environmentalist. You will struggle to find someone with more love for our natural environment than me, which is why I spent seven years overseas in my early 20s, travelling around various countries, climbing the slopes of Kilimanjaro or Mont Blanc, diving in numerous countries, hiking in numerous countries, and being fascinated by what a wonderful and beautiful world we live in. One of the things I noticed is that, the poorer the country, the worse the waste problem was. That is why we should never destroy our economy to save the environment, because without a strong economy you will not save the environment. It's very important. Many countries just don't have freely available the things that we take for granted in Australia, like garbage bins, and, for that matter, sanitary facilities. I've been in many places in Third World countries where you get a bit of diarrhoea or something and you have to find a toilet. I can tell you it's something that you take for granted in this country, but in many other countries it is difficult to find. So we should always be ensuring that we protect our economy and keep waste to a minimum.

I believe that the reliable, affordable, emission-free energy that is contained within hydro power, hydrogen power and, of course, one of the world's most cleanest and most reliable sources of power, nuclear energy, is the path to the future. It's why I asked in estimates about chirped pulse amplification, which is a technology that has recently come to the fore. In 2018 a Nobel prize was given for work in this area. The technology involves a very strong, powerful laser beam being shone on a nucleus, the idea being that you shine it on the neutrons and try to flip one of the quarks to turn a neutron into a proton. That will reduce the lifespan of radioactive waste from nuclear energy by thousands of years, to about 30 years. If we could do that, that would be a huge step forward in being able to use nuclear energy as a clean, green method of energy, and eventually we're going to have to go there. One of these days, if we ever have to leave Planet Earth, we won't be leaving it with a wind-powered spaceship, I can assure you. There is no wind and not much light up there in space, so, if we ever have to find means to find other resources somewhere else, it's going to have to involve nuclear technology. The country that gets on top of that is going to be the country that leads on manufacturing and things like that, because nuclear energy, if used properly, will be the cheapest form of energy.

Waste management is crucial to keep Australia's environmental wonders wondrous. That is why, on behalf of the Australian government, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency announced that it is placing over $15 million of funding into 16 projects to help address the solar PV panel efficiency and end-of-life issues. I have always been a strong supporter of adequate strategies and research being used to investigate solar and battery waste, as can be seen by my submission on the EPBC Act. Given the potential environmental disaster solar waste disposal could cause through the leaching of hazardous materials such as lithium and lead, this research funding could not come too soon.

Contrary to what many have been made to believe by those opposite, the disposal of waste from materials such as solar panels and plastics poses one of the largest environmental threats to countless ecosystems around the world, our beloved Great Barrier Reef being the biggest one close to home. Forget theories based on fundamentally flawed BOM data and methods. Forget the potential negligible impact our farmers have on three per cent of inland reefs. Waste disposal is an environmental disaster that is affecting our marine ecosystems now and is only going to get worse, as solar and battery waste is expected to become a major contributor to national waste in the decades to come.

By banning unprocessed plastics, cardboard, paper and other recyclable material from being exported, we are creating a circular economy. The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 is simply the first of many reforms to our economy to make it better suited to the changing climate of foreign politics and to ensure the sustainable use of resources for our future generations. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and associated bills, and I want to associate myself with the remarks made by my Greens colleague Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, who has been a longstanding, passionate advocate for waste reduction and recycling. I have a strong commitment to moving us towards zero waste and a circular economy. I've had that commitment for a long time through my work in the New South Wales parliament and before that in my role as environmental manager in local governments.

While this bill in front of us bans waste export, which is really good, this bill is nowhere near enough to deal with the mountains of waste that we produce. The truth of the matter is that we should never have been exporting waste in the first place. I think many Australians were alarmed when they found out about this. If waste is produced here, it should be dealt with here. 'Out of sight, out of mind' is not going to cut it anymore. If the government is really serious about addressing the waste crisis, these bills are not the solution; they are just window-dressing for the problem. Banning waste exports is not going to help us crawl out of the mountains of waste that we produce and neither is recycling by itself. Being serious about waste means starting at the top of the waste hierarchy by avoiding and reducing waste, then moving on to reuse and repair, and then recycling and so on. The least preferred option, of course, is disposal. These bills do nothing to reduce waste. These bills do nothing to make product stewardship mandatory, nothing to ensure that the producers of the waste have the responsibility for it and nothing to address the problem of plastics pollution.

Before I say a little more on these issues, I want to highlight the size of the problem that we face. To start the story of waste, let's get a snapshot of what we produce, recycle and dump. Australia produced about 76 million tonnes of waste in 2018-19. That's at least five million full garbage trucks every single year. To enable you visualise that, Madam Deputy President: if those trucks were lined up they would form a queue of about 40,000 kilometres, which is well over the length of the whole coastline of Australia. That's the extent of the problem that we are facing. According to MRA Consulting, between 1996 and 2015 our population increased by 28 per cent while our waste generation increased by 170 per cent. That's a compound growth rate of about eight per cent a year.

Our waste habits also have a significant impact on the climate crisis, first through the use of energy and material to satisfy our appetite for production and consumption and then through the methane that is produced from landfill when we bury our discards. Methane is much more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. That only exacerbates the climate emergency that we are already in. While there is no doubt, when you look at the numbers in our state of the environment reports, that the rate of recycling has definitely increased over the years, the total amount of waste has also increased, and that is the crux of the problem. We can't keep on producing more and more, throwing it out and then hoping to recycle our way out of this mountain of rubbish.

Waste and recycling was brought into the public focus just a few years ago with a Four Corners expose, aptly called 'Trashed'. The program told us some things that we knew and some things that came as quite a shock to many of us, especially the revelation that possibly half of all the waste that we thought was being recycled was ending up in landfill or as stockpiled material in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. We found out that what we were diligently separating for recycling at home wasn't being recycled at all.

It is deeply concerning that, rather than focusing on the root causes of waste and how to manage it, governments have decided to go down the path of unsustainable, polluting alternatives like waste incinerators. In New South Wales alone there are proposals for five waste incinerators. If built, these garbage incinerators will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, poisoning our air with dioxins, furans, heavy metals and fine particles such as PM2.5 and PM10, putting in danger the health of communities living in their vicinity. There is a real concern that these waste burners could effectively monopolise waste disposal as well. What might end up happening is that material that could be reused or recycled is burnt in incinerators instead. To meet the appetite of these burning machines, more waste will be produced, not less. These incinerators have absolutely zero social licence. They have been thoroughly rejected by the community. When I was in the New South Wales parliament, I was part of a massive community campaign to push back on the gigantic world's largest toxic waste incinerator proposed for Eastern Creek in Western Sydney. Because of the courage of the community, it was knocked back by the department of planning, the New South Wales EPA, NSW Health and the parliamentary inquiry that I sat on. The Independent Planning Commission drove the final nail in the coffin of this waste burner. Melinda Wilson, spokesperson for Western Sydney Direct Action, was recently reported as saying:

Why and how can a project already rejected by the Independent Planning Commission (IPC) come back again, five-fold? Why did the Minister not accept the IPC's advice and reject these incinerators once and for all?

She's right. The risks to human health and the environment are serious and irreversible. These incinerators are no solution to the waste problem. Energy from burning rubbish is not renewable, clean or green. These big, dirty waste polluters have recently been banned in the ACT, and rightly so. The federal government should show leadership and at least stop any public funding going to these waste incinerators. This legislation is an opportunity to do that.

While we are talking about ways in which the federal government can show leadership, let's talk about plastics. One hundred and eighty million plastic bags find their way into the environment every year, and microplastics have been found in the majority of drinking water supplies all around the world. Conservative estimates have stated that there are currently five trillion pieces of plastic on the surface of oceans and an additional eight million tonnes of plastics entering oceans every single year. This is the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic every minute of every day of the year. Australia alone produces over 2.5 million tonnes of plastic per year. That's a huge addition to the global plastic pollution problem. In 2018-19, nine per cent of plastic was sent to be recycled, while a whopping 84 per cent was sent to landfill. A worrying amount of this waste ends up on our streets and in our waterways.

The impacts of plastics are devastating to our marine life, such as seabirds, dolphins, seals and turtles. I want to thank the wonderful people who work at facilities like the Australian Seabird Rescue in Ballina, where they rescue and rehabilitate marine animals and seabirds that have usually been injured after ingesting plastic. They also educate schoolchildren to reduce the use of plastics.

The 2015 Senate committee report into the threat of marine plastic pollution stated that there are worrying gaps in our knowledge about the effects of marine plastic pollution. This includes the impacts on population levels of native animals, the effects on human health of plastics in the food chain, as well the short- and long-term effects of microplastics. If the Prime Minister really wants to tackle the plastic pollution problem—and he should do this with gusto—then this bill must be amended to address plastics. I know that some state governments are moving to ban single-use plastics. But right here, right now, the federal government has the opportunity to show some guts. Let's not let this chance slip away from us. At the end of the day, we need to urgently reduce production and consumption, and make big strides away from being a throwaway society. Instead of starting at the bottom-of-the-waste hierarchy with landfilling, burning waste and recycling, why not start at the very top, with waste avoidance? Even better, let's look at it from the perspective of material and resource management rather than waste management. On the other side of the waste coin is the unbridled use of precious natural resources like our forests and water. There are many tools available for us to do this. For example, approaches like mandatory extended producer responsibility—which makes producers of goods responsible for their full life cycle—have been quite successful in reducing material use, extending a product's life and making it easier to reuse, repair and recycle. Basically, the attitude of the industry must be to design for the environment. If it can't be fixed, reused or recycled, don't make it. The repair economy is also something really worth investing in.

Waste is a hot topic at the moment, and we should reignite the conversation about drastically reducing and eliminating waste. While the idea of zero waste can be daunting, according to the Zero Waste International Alliance:0

Zero Waste is a goal that is both pragmatic and visionary, to guide people to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are resources for others to use. Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to reduce the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them. Implementing Zero Waste will eliminate all discharges to land, water, or air that may be a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health

That's what we all should be trying to do. There is an overwhelming appetite in the community to reduce waste, but we need the government to step in and step up—to play a role. Local councils are at the forefront of waste management but need the state and federal governments to come to the party with funding, support and policy that signals a shift to the words voiding, reducing and reusing waste This bill should not be a wasted opportunity. The time to act is now.

David Van (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In September last year, in my first senator's statement, I said:

Our oceans are choking with plastic and other waste, yet conversations within our community are repetitive, and action needs to move at a quicker pace.

So it is a great privilege to stand in this chamber today to speak on the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and related bills. What a time to get the opportunity to debate and pass this important legislation. Just last month we celebrated National Recycling Week, which is designed to engage with all Australians on the importance of recycling. This year's theme was 'Recovery—A future beyond the bin', which is about closing the recycling loop and buying products made with recycled content.

We are seeing private industry play a significant role in the reduction of single-use products. In my home state of Victoria we are seeing innovative companies, such as one that I'm very familiar with, called Returnr, which was founded by one of the co-founders of KeepCup, starting to see market growth on the back of developing ways to reduce single-use plastics with reusable solutions in the takeaway food industry. These local businesses are recognising that local communities, businesses and families have an important role to play in global sustainability. This approach needs pragmatic, sensible outcomes and not just virtue signalling.

The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill is a wonderful example of a pragmatic, sensible approach to increasing our recycling and reducing the amount of waste that we send to landfill. One thing that we know for sure is that Australians want to be confident that when they put their bin out on the kerb everything will be collected and recycled. Australians do not want to see their recycling sent to landfill, shipped overseas or stored illegally to become a fire hazard that could explode in a fire at any minute. As the Prime Minister has said: it's our waste; it's our responsibility. That is why this government, under the leadership of Scott Morrison and the tireless efforts of Minister Ley and Assistant Minister Evans, has introduced this legislation.

This legislation will implement the waste export ban agreed by Australian governments in March this year and reform the Product Stewardship Act 2011. The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill will phase out Australia's offshoring of 645,000 tonnes of plastic, paper, glass and tyres. It is important to remember that whenever we export our waste overseas we are essentially passing our rubbish on to other countries to deal with. The phasing out of Australia exporting its waste will ensure that it is dealt with here. It is our waste, and we bear the responsibility for ensuring that the highest waste recycling standards are met.

To meet the increase in waste being dealt with onshore, we must develop and transform Australia's recycling capabilities and capacities. To do so, the Morrison government is leading a billion dollar transformation of our waste and recycling industry. We are achieving this by helping to build onshore demand for recycled content and helping industry to invest in innovative technology to deal with it. These efforts will create more than 10,000 much-needed jobs and divert over 10 million tonnes of resources from landfill. As I said at the start of my speech, this bill will deliver a pragmatic and sensible approach to increasing our recycling and reducing the amount of waste which is sent to landfill, which is why the next aspect of the bill really excites me. At the same time as phasing out our export waste, we're also introducing reforms to the regulation of product stewardship. These reforms will incentivise companies to take greater environmental responsibility for the products they manufacture, including at the end of the product's life. As we on this side are very good at, it is a combination of carrot and stick: investing in greater environmental responsibility at the time of manufacturing while also investing in Australia's recycling capacity.

As senators in this place are aware, I am a member of the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, which considered this bill in great detail. One of the things that really stuck with me throughout the inquiry was how supportive Australian industry, business, green groups and local communities have been towards the waste export ban. All of these groups are supportive of this ban because they see it as a positive catalyst for change. The Morrison government sees it as an opportunity for change as well.

I mentioned Returnr before. It's a business that is shaking up the takeaway industry with their reusable products. But now I want to mention two other great businesses, in the fashion industry, who are also doing their bit to reduce waste. Newly back in Australian hands, RM Williams is offering $150 off new boots if you exchange your old boots. All traded RMs will be restored and replenished for future resale. The clothing brand MJ Bale will slash $200 off any new suit when you bring your old suit in to be donated to Moving the Needle, which is a business collaboration between Australian Red Cross, The Salvation Army and St Vincent's, or St Vinnies. These businesses are tackling the challenge of dealing with waste and recycling head-on and, at the same time, supporting charities and ensuring more Australians have access to great Australian fashion. As a Senate, we should congratulate them for undertaking these initiatives.

This government is striving to support these businesses that are supporting our waste export ban. We've introduced the most significant package of policies and funding commitments on recycling and waste ever brought forward by a federal government. We've introduced the National Waste Policy Action Plan, which will achieve, amongst many things, an 80 per cent average recovery rate across all waste streams and a significant increase in procurement of recycled materials, and it will halve the amount of organic waste sent to landfill. In addition, we are leading substantial investment in recycling through the new $190 million Recycling Modernisation Fund. This fund will use its power to leverage $600 million of new investment in recycling infrastructure. We are providing $35 million to deliver on the Commonwealth elements of the National Waste Policy Action Plan and $24.6 million to improve our waste data. These investments complement our already comprehensive $167 million Australian recycling investment plan. This plan includes $100 million under the Clean Energy Finance Corporation for large-scale projects using clean energy technologies to support the recycling of waste products; $20 million for the National Product Stewardship Investment Fund to kickstart product stewardship action; and Australia's first National Plastics Summit, which was hosted by this government in March and mobilised major pledges from leading companies including the Pact Group, Nestle, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and Coles. The outcomes from the summit will help inform Australia's national plastics plan and achieve a phase-out of problematic and unnecessary plastics over the next five years.

The Morrison government have a strong and positive story to tell on our efforts to reduce waste and increase recycling, and I'm proud to tell that story in this place. Our policies will reduce waste, incentivise the recycling industry and lift recycling rates. They'll tackle plastics pollution in our oceans and waterways. They'll ensure we build a healthy recycling and resource recovery industry in Australia. However, most importantly, we will give Australians the confidence that what they put in their recycling bin will actually be recycled.

Waste is not just an environmental problem to solve; it is an economic opportunity, and, because of the initiatives included in this bill, business will seize the opportunity to re-use and recycle, and they will do it here, at home in Australia.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020, and in doing so associate myself with the comments already put forward by the Greens spokesperson on waste and recycling, who, of course, is Senator Whish-Wilson. Senator Whish-Wilson has been an avid supporter for a proper recycling and waste management industry in this country, and I think it's fair to say that we wouldn't be here, where we are today, debating this piece of legislation if it weren't for the work of Senator Whish-Wilson.

We know, of course, that reducing waste is and must be the goal that all of us strive and advocate for. We need to be reducing waste. We need to be reducing the stuff that makes waste. I think our lives—and many people would reflect upon this—are just increasingly full of stuff. There's stuff we don't really need, stuff that doesn't last long enough and stuff that, at the end of it, we think: 'How did we end up with this? What do we do with it now?' That is why we need a proper management system that is fully circular. We need to be reducing the amount of crap that's made that isn't recyclable, that isn't actually reusable and perhaps think about whether we need it in the first place.

We need to be making sure that when we do put in place systems that deal with the waste that we have that it is done in the most environmentally friendly and sustainable manner. We need to stop producing in this country and, indeed, around the world single-use plastic, and if you can't reuse something we shouldn't be creating it. That, I think, is the principle that we need going forward, because there is a lot of rubbish out there already that we don't know how we're going to manage. The last thing we need to be doing is creating more of it to make it even harder to deal with the problems at hand.

We know that our oceans are choking. We know that our waterways are polluted. We know that our animals are dying because of the amount of plastic, rubbish and toxic waste that they have ingested. We know that animals are being caught and strangled because of the rubbish that is left in our rivers and winds up in our oceans.

Sea Shepherd Australia has been running beach clean-ups around the country, and I've been to a number of them in my home state of South Australia. Since 2016, Sea Shepherd Australia has hosted nearly 700 beach and remote clean-ups, joining with over 28,000 members of the community. It is just incredible, when you go to these beach clean-ups, where you put aside two or three hours and walk out with buckets, tongs and gloves, the amount of rubbish that is collected over one simple morning. Children, in particular, are gobsmacked at the amount of rubbish that they find, and children are the ones who are really calling on us as adults and as leaders to take serious action on this front.

For far too long Australia has not cared about the rubbish it creates and where it goes. This legislation is a step in the right direction. It's starting to deal with this terrible pollution problem we have, but it isn't the final solution and it isn't the only answer. We still have many more steps to take. One of them of course is banning single-use plastics. We have to stop creating this crap. We have to stop creating this rubbish. We have to deal with the plastic that we have already.

We also need to be putting in place systems that ensure that disposal of the waste is done in the most environmentally sound and sustainable way. While this legislation is a step in the right direction, I am concerned about the hole in this legislation that would act as a perverse incentive for the incineration of waste. Why am I concerned about that? We need a clear statement from this government that the aim is to reduce the amount of pollution and to reduce the amount of toxic waste. Allowing for the incineration of plastic in order to get rid of it is going to create even more problems for us in the future, particularly as we tackle the very serious environmental crisis of climate change and carbon pollution.

We know we need to be getting out of fossil fuels. We have to stop burning fossil fuels. The last thing we want to do is create a perverse incentive by saying, 'You can create more plastic and we'll create a market mechanism to ensure you can keep burning it,' because that is simply burning oil and fossil fuels and creating more pollution. That's not the pathway we want to take. That is why I move:

At the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate:

(a) agrees that waste-to-energy incineration has no place in a sustainable zero waste management and circular economy agenda; and

(b) calls on the Government to rule out any financial or regulatory support for waste-to-energy incineration".

After all we know about the rubbish that is clogging our oceans and waterways, which takes so long to deal with, the last thing we want to do is create an incentive for vested interest not to reduce the amount of plastic that's produced but to simply put it in an incinerator, burn it and claim that this is some type of clean energy production. It is not. It is toxic and backwards. That is not the fully circular waste management agenda that we need.

Don't get me wrong. I understand that across the country we've become better and better at dealing with the gases that come out of landfill. In fact, there are many ways that the gas coming out of landfill is being captured and turned into energy. But we don't want to see a market created because of loopholes in the law and because the wrong signal is being sent by government. We don't want to see a bunch of companies set up to make a quick buck by burning the plastic in an incinerator and turning it into energy. We need to be reducing the amount of plastic we produce in the first place.

Some of the landfill-to-energy programs that already exist in Australia have taken the best available science from around the world, particularly places like Germany. They rely on the anaerobic digestion system. This is taking green organic waste and, rather than having the toxic gas released into the atmosphere, capturing that gas and turning it into energy. I understand that, and of course it needs to continue, because we do have this organic matter in landfill. But there is a very big difference between that and setting up a market that is supported by government, whether through regulation or financial support or incentives, that sends a signal that you can keep producing as much plastic as you want if these guys over here are going to make money by burning it and creating pollution. That is not the pathway that we need to take.

So I urge the crossbench, I urge the government and I urge the opposition to support my second reading amendment in relation to this, because we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. I've listened to a number of the contributions from senators on all sides in relation to this legislation, and I think it's fair to say that there is goodwill in relation to dealing with waste and recycling and protecting our environment. Let's not undo all of that goodwill and that good work by providing an incentive for some cowboys out there in the industry who want to keep making plastic so that they can burn plastic waste and sell it as power. That's going to create more pollution. It doesn't deal with the issue of plastics choking our waterways and our oceans, and it doesn't deal with the fundamental issue that we have: we create too much crap and we don't recycle or reuse enough of it.

We have to make sure that we get back to basics: reduce, reuse, recycle. Of course, if we do all of this properly, what do we create? We create green jobs, the greenest jobs available. There is a huge industry that is desperate for support to ensure that we deal with waste in a circular process. But all of that will be undercut if we allow, through this legislation, a loophole that provides a perverse incentive for cowboys out there in the industry to make a quick buck by burning plastics and creating pollution. So I urge the government to consider this and not to let that happen. I commend the bills to the parliament, but I urge that those actions in relation to the second reading amendment be taken on board and supported by the government.

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

A year and a half ago I found myself on another one of my North Queensland trips to speak with a company that has developed a method of recycling farm plastics, which are often used for crops like tomatoes, strawberries and melons. For those of you who aren't familiar with farming, at the end of every season the crops are cut back and thousands of kilometres of this black plastic is ripped up and rolled into giant balls that were once upon a time dumped into landfill. This happened on thousands of farms across Australia each year, so you can only imagine how much plastic was ending up in the ground. Once the dumping practice ended, farms were just storing unmeasurable numbers of these plastic bales, which were a ticking time bomb for firebugs and environmental damage on prime agricultural land.

You might ask why this plastic wasn't being recycled in the first place. The problem farmers faced was that, when they'd ripped the plastic up from the moist soil below, dirt would stick to the plastic. The dirt was enough to contaminate the recycling process, so therefore the bales of plastic would just get stored in the corner of a farm. But along came this young bloke, Cory Towner, who was young achiever of the year for showing us that the device he'd developed not just ripped up the black plastic but removed the soil and green matter. His biggest impediment was that he couldn't find the financial support to build these devices on a commercial scale. I was so impressed by what he'd developed that I helped him by becoming an ambassador for his company. I'm not sure too many other senators in this parliament have put their money where their mouths are when it comes to recycling. It would be interesting to ask the Greens how many of them own shares or an interest in a recycling company.

Let's face it, we all have a responsibility to deal with rubbish and recycling in this country, but we'd have a whole lot less to deal with if we weren't buying in cheap goods from countries like China. My generation and older, as well as those who are probably in their early to mid 40s know what recycling is about. My father's garage had shelves of re-used pickle jars full of screws and God knows what else he kept in there. He was the kind of man who could fix just about anything around the house. The other side of the coin was that our pantry had glass jars repurposed for jams that Mum would make out of fruit we grew in the backyard. We'd take the glass soft-drink bottles back to the store for a credit or refund, or donate them to the local Scouts group. We drank from a tap when we were thirsty; we didn't buy water in plastic bottles. When we went for weekend drives, we put boiled water in a flask and made our coffee or tea in the old enamel cups, not throwaway takeaway cups. And we bought quality. We bought Australian made appliances for the house, not this cheap crap we see on the shelves that lasts 12 months if you're lucky.

This Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 talks about the action plan aimed at driving change in industry, business, governments and the community to turn waste into reusable commodities. I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything useful to do with a $7.50 Kmart toaster that breaks, or burns someone's house down. Nor can I see how a $9 BigW sandwich maker can be turned into a re-usable commodity. These are just two examples of the cheap rubbish we are being sold in stores across Australia. Most of these dead household items just end up in landfill. We bury it—out of sight, out of mind. Let's face it, there's very little worth in keeping a cheap $7.50 cordless kettle from Kmart.

This bill states that it intends to regulate the export of waste material 'which is likely to have a negative impact on the environment or human health in the receiving country'. But where's the regulation to stop the importation of cheap material that is likely to harm the environment or human health in our country—in Australia? As far as I'm concerned, the bulk of what we're sending back is their rubbish sent here to begin with. Take solar panels, for example. Here in Australia we can't do a single thing with dead cells. We're burying them, and all of that cadmium, lead and other toxic chemicals eventually leach into the soil and into waterways. The same goes for other renewable energy sources, like wind turbines. So you're screaming out for more solar panels and more wind turbines in the country, but no-one's told me how you intend to get rid of them. What are we going to do with them?

Some of the Greens might find this difficult to comprehend, but I've been working with the Turnbull and Morrison governments for about three years to enable the world's first commercial recycling plant for asbestos. Asbestos is one of the most deadly materials that a dump and a community will deal with not only in this country but right across the globe. This thermochemical plant that I've taken to the government has been approved by environmental agencies in the United States and the European Union, but not here in Australia.

The Australian company EnviroMaster is being held up by a second feasibility study because of bureaucracy and government departments. They've been forced to undertake two feasibility studies worth more than $12 million. It's the usual red tape we hear about that's helping to continue the trend of digging giant holes and burying thousands of tonnes of this deadly material each week—and this is happening every single day in suburban areas, like my old home town of Ipswich. You heard it here first: Australia has a way of recycling asbestos. But we continue to bury it as best practice, which, as it stands, has an eternal legacy. We can thank federal and state government bureaucrats who feel the need to stifle this new technology, which has already been approved in the United States and Europe. If I knew the names of these bureaucrats I'd name them here, because they're doing a great job proving to taxpayers why they hate dealing with government departments.

Australia could do much more recycling if—I emphasise 'if' for a reason—it had cheaper energy. But because we're not prepared to build more coal-fired power stations we've been forced to send glass and other recycled products overseas, where energy costs are at least half that of Australia's. Again, these bills are just a part of the solution to better recycling here in Australia. Both Senator Roberts and I will be supporting the legislation.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and the package of related legislation collectively represent a giant and gaping missed opportunity to tackle the waste crisis that is engulfing not only our country but in fact the entire world. As the Senate inquiry into these bills made abundantly clear, these bills do not go nearly far enough to tackle the waste crisis. Let's be clear: this is an absolute crisis. Microplastics have been found in the deepest parts of our oceans. They are leeching into the waterways and oceans on every part of our planet and they are choking and poisoning our ecosystems, in particular our marine ecosystems.

We've all seen the shocking photos and images of giant drifts of plastics, whether they are lapping up on beaches, packed so solidly that you cannot even see the water, or whether they have congealed into giant mid-ocean rafts. This terrible habit that we have collectively got into of using fossil fuels—and, remember, plastic is generated from fossil fuels—to create products that we use but once and then dispose of simply by chucking them out the car window into the ocean when we're down at the beach or off the sides of our vessels has to end. We are choking the planet and its ecosystems with plastic. We know that fossil fuel companies are cooking our planet, but, when you remember that the people who make plastic are also fossil fuel companies, they're not just cooking our planet; they are choking our planet with rubbish and with microplastics.

These bills are completely inadequate. I want to congratulate Senator Whish-Wilson on the way he has engaged with this legislation and on the amendments he has developed, and I commend his amendments to the chamber. On some of the flaws in this legislation: it overlooks plastic packaging, which is one of the biggest sources, if not the biggest source, of the plastic waste problem. The bills contain no mandatory targets. You would have thought we would have learned from history, which shows us clearly that simply asking big corporations to modify their behaviour is not going to work when they believe that the changes required to modify their behaviour will impact on their bottom line, on their profits. It's blindingly obvious. It happens time after time after time. When we bring in these voluntary codes of conduct for corporations, they are almost never adhered to. What we need is legislated targets here to make sure that corporations do what they should be doing for the public good and to look after nature on our planet.

As a general principle, humanity simply cannot continue to create as much waste as we do, we cannot afford to continue to burn as much waste as we do, and we certainly cannot afford to continue disposing of waste in the way that we do and in the quantities that we do. Of course, as with so many of the topics we debate in this place, the good news is that we can actually have a win-win here. We can look after nature, marine ecosystems, our environment and our climate and create jobs at the same time. Looking after waste is incredibly job intensive. We need to make sure that we've got enough jobs for people who want them in this country, and currently we don't. Despite all the spin that we'll get from the government benches, there are simply fewer jobs in Australia than there are people who want to work. That's not a controversial statement; that is simply a statement of fact. So why wouldn't we look to create jobs in areas where jobs have extra benefits over and above the simple creation of work—looking after nature, looking after our oceans and reversing the climate breakdown, for example?

That's why the Greens have been talking about significant investment into the infrastructure that will reduce waste and help to rebuild our domestic recycling industry, because we've got lazy over the last few decades in this country. Overwhelmingly, we've made decisions to not invest into a domestic recycling industry but instead to export our recyclable products overseas. For various reasons, that hasn't worked, and particularly in recent years it's worked less and less. So let's invest into rebuilding our domestic recycling industry so that we can create jobs and address one of the most significant environmental issues facing our planet.

Of course the Greens want mandatory product stewardship and a national container deposit scheme, but we also want to phase out single-use plastics. I'll tell you now: when the history of this time is written, there are going to be some pretty big villains writ large in those pages, and those villains are going to be the people who dug in and resisted real climate action, the coal huggers and gas sniffers of this place. They're going to be some of the biggest villains, and they're the people who, when they're retired out of this place, are going to have to answer to their children and in particular to their grandchildren. But it's not just the fossil fools who are going to have to answer those questions; it is those who either stood in the way of meaningful action on waste or put forward solutions which are not strong enough to deal with the problem and then claimed that in fact they were dealing with those problems.

So we have to phase out single-use plastics. How are we going to explain to our grandchildren that we allowed mass marine extinctions and micoplastics to permeate every underwater crevice on this planet, simply because we kept using fossil fuels to generate plastics which were used once and then cast aside to pollute our oceans in the long term?

Addressing our waste crisis will take real leadership. It will take leadership far, far above and beyond the mere tinkering that is encapsulated in the government's legislation. What real leadership would look like would be leadership that did in fact phase out single-use plastics and that did introduce mandatory product stewardship so that the corporations that create the waste are ultimately responsible for managing it right through to the end of its life. Real leadership would look like a national container deposit scheme, and real leadership would look like significant investment into rebuilding our domestic recycling industry. Our land environments and our marine environments, which are already under massive pressure because our climate is breaking down around us, are also under pressure because of the massive amounts of waste that we generate.

We need to see a circular economy with a booming and productive recycling industry. We need to put the onus on companies that are creating this problem to take responsibility for fixing or for being part of fixing these problems. I will tell you now: if you make it cheaper for companies to change their behaviour, rather than simply engage in the status quo, they will take that option. If you make companies pay for the end-of-life management of plastic products, for example, then it might become cheaper for them not to use the plastic in the first place. That's what we want to see. We want—in fact, we not only want but need—to see companies changing their behaviour. We need to see them phasing out single-use plastics. We can do that at the corporate level, and we should do it at the corporate level. We can also do it at the community level, and I want to give a shout-out to Ben Kearney, who led the campaign for and the ultimately successful introduction of a ban on plastic bags in the township of Coles Bay, one of Tasmania's premier tourist towns. Ben, as part of that community, had the conversations that he needed to have, built the community support that he needed to build, and, ultimately, Coles Bay became the first town in the country to ban single-use plastic shopping bags—a small but extremely significant step that shows that we can do this if we're prepared to make the effort and put in the work.

It is time, undoubtedly, to take far, far bigger steps than what the government is proposing in its legislation. It is time to get serious about addressing these problems. We owe it to nature and to all the beautiful creatures, whether they be seabirds or aquatic mammals choking to death on plastic beer can holders or ingesting dozens of plastic bags a day and dying because their digestive systems can't cope with them. We owe it to nature to look after nature, but we also owe it to ourselves. We owe it to humanity and we owe it to all the people who believe we should have a clean environment and respect nature so that nature can continue to look after us. Let's end these small steps from the government. Let's put in place a policy framework that would actually give us a chance at significantly addressing what is certainly a major problem that we are facing. That's why the Greens amendments to be moved by Senator Whish-Wilson are so important. They show the pathway to the kind of leadership that we collectively need and that every person on this planet collectively needs so that we can get on top of one of the biggest environmental challenges facing humanity.

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

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

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

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

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

Debate interrupted.