Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's been a pleasure during this term to serve on the committee chaired by Senator Whish-Wilson that is examining renewables and recycling and the circular economy out there in the world. We're looking at the resource that Australia has in its recycling.

Many of us would've seen a gentleman named Rick Ralph around this building promoting the interests of recycling and resources, and today I want to note that there's been a change. He was head of the National Waste Recycling Industry Council; it's now been renamed the Australian Resources Recovery Council. That is to take note of the ability to get resources out of those things and what we're doing. They have more of a focus on using those resources as a transactable commodity. It's a very important change in philosophy.

The industry of recycling and resources contributes $18.9 billion and 95,000 jobs to the economy. For every tonne of recyclables that are recovered, $465 and one extra job goes to the economy. Those are the things that this does. This focuses on getting these resources that people throw away—whether it be glass, metals, concrete, paper, which we're used to doing, and all sorts of food waste and all sorts of green waste—and putting them back into the economy to create things, not putting them in the ground and wasting them.

Realising that this is a resource is a refocusing of the industry. Everyone in this chamber, other than the government side, came together to stop a pseudo tax on this resource by disallowing some fees by regulation at the end of last year. Not throwing away the things we make when we can turn them into productive goods is such a key thing. We have to find more markets for this. We're exporting at the moment. That's something that we don't want to do, because there's an edge for our manufacturers if we can use these resources in our own products. There should be more of that. We should focus on recovering and using this to make the economy better.