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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to a question without notice I asked today relating to plastic pollution.

I ask Senator Wong if she could get a response to my first question from the department, which I think she offered to do. In the Sydney Morning Herald on 28 May—just recently—there was an article entitled 'Australia steps in to stop countries watering down plastics pact'. The Minister for the Environment and Water, I read in this article, flew to Paris for critical talks on a proposed global plastics treaty, saying she was concerned that countries were trying to make the targets for reducing plastic voluntary instead of legally binding. She was looking for a high-ambition pact, which I think we're all looking for. So I ask Senator Wong if she could get a response from the department.

I want to put on record today that the plastic pollution in our oceans is one of the biggest global pollution issues we face. We currently produce around 480 million tonnes of plastic, mostly plastic packaging, every year, and current estimates are that that is set to triple by 2060 if we don't do something about our consumption and production of plastics. Plastics are found all through our oceans. As they break down because of physical and other processes in our oceans, they become microplastics. We've now found them all through our food chain. We've found them in plankton in the Antarctic.

I always used to point out to my students, when I taught economics at university, that environmental problems are usually caused by business activities and economics, and it's the government's role to step in and regulate externalities. There is no bigger externality, in my opinion, than climate change, and then comes the scourge or the toxic tide of plastic pollution. It was what I spoke about in my first speech to the Senate, and it was one reason I actually came to parliament and the Senate. I've spent more than a decade in this place doing whatever I can, working with great people around the country, to actually try and get some action on this.

But now, when I speak to people as a politician, I actually say: 'You know what? Environmental problems aren't what you think.' I used to tell people they were economic problems, but actually, first and foremost, they're political problems, and we should see them as political problems, because only politics and parliaments can solve them. One way—in fact, the only way—we can solve this scourge of plastic pollution in our oceans that does so much damage to our marine life is to regulate the packaging industry. In this country we have had self-regulation or voluntary regulation around plastic packaging, so the big packaging companies, the retailers and the brands have set their own targets. They have consistently missed them for decades, and there's never been a consequence. It's been an absolute farce, and this has happened all around the world. That is why Minister Plibersek, as I read in this newspaper, went to Paris: to call for a legally binding treaty—in other words, government regulations. But here's the rub: we don't have that in Australia. So I just pointed out that it looks like hypocrisy to go and try to lead a global negotiation when you can't do it in your own country.

In Minister Plibersek's defence, she's only been in government for 12 months, and this is a problem I've been harping on about now for a very long time. I want to credit the Liberal Party for taking, when previously in government, the first steps towards better product stewardship schemes so that we at least have an architecture to use. But they never went as far as actually intervening and saying to the big plastic polluters, 'We are going to regulate you because this is useless.' The minister has said in many comments that she will step in and regulate if the industry doesn't act, and she's gone further recently and said she is now consulting with industry on mandatory product stewardship schemes for things like plastic packaging.

However, that means consulting with the big companies who are responsible for this, and I can tell you they do not want government regulation. They have fought it tooth and nail. We've had two big Senate inquiries into this in the last 10 years. They oppose regulation. They do not want to be responsible for the pollution that they cause. The only way we're going to stop this is for government to have the guts and the courage to step in and solve this externality and this political problem. That is what the Australian people want, I absolutely guarantee. This issue cuts across all political divides and all demographics. No-one wants to see our ocean turning into a toxic tide. Only we can fix it.

Question agreed to.