Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of this motion moved by Dr Allen, the member for Higgins. The motion states:

That this House:

(1) recognises the imperative of improving waste management, reducing unnecessary packaging and boosting recycling in Australia;

(2) acknowledges that:

(a) Australians generate about 67 million tonnes of waste each year, of which 37 million tonnes is recycled;

(b) only 12 per cent of the 103 kilograms of plastic waste generated per person in Australia each year is recycled, mostly overseas;

(c) for every 10,000 tonnes of waste recycled, more than 9 jobs are created; and

(d) waste related activities add $6.9 billion to the economy annually;

(3) welcomes the Government's recent $20 million commitment for innovative projects under round 8 of the Cooperative Research Centres Projects grants to grow our domestic plastics recycling industry; and

(4) notes that this is part of the Government's Australian Recycling Investment Plan, a package of initiatives totalling $167 million designed to grow and strengthen Australia's domestic recycling industry, and to support industry and community initiatives to lift recycling rates in Australia.

I support that. While this is an issue that has always been prominent in my mind—as someone who loves the Australian environment—it was brought back to the forefront when I recently met with one of my constituents, Mr Les Barkla. Les is a fundamental part of the 'Pristine peninsula' community group and a very vocal constituent on one of the more important issues affecting Petrie, Australia and the world.

We must not forget that Australia is a large contributor to worldwide waste. Our share of the global waste almost doubles our share of the global population, and a large contributing factor to this is problematic single-use packaging. As someone who loves the environment, freshwater ecosystems and our native reptiles, too often I see this in freshwater creeks and in saltwater creeks. These are items that have such minimal use in our day-to-day lives. They are quickly disposed of, either picked up by volunteers that populate Les's group—there are a number of them and they do a great job—or they end up getting washing into Moreton Bay when my community next has heavy rain. They flow unobstructed through our waterways and into Moreton Bay, with devastating effects on our marine environment.

Some direction can be taken from the 2018-19 Keep Australia Beautiful National Litter Index report. We saw some promising changes, with beaches, parks and residential sites all exhibiting decreases in litter, specifically cigarettes, takeaway containers and paper litter.

However, increases at industrial sites, highways and shopping centres show that there is more work to do. According to the National waste report of 2019, Australia as a nation produces 64 million tonnes of waste each year, which equates to 2.7 tonnes of annual waste per person.

Our government has committed to getting recycling done locally. That's very important to me. We have implemented a comprehensive $167 million Australian Recycling Investment Plan to increase Australia's recycling rates, tackle plastic waste and litter, and accelerate work on new recycling schemes. We will ban the export of waste, plastic, paper, glass and tyres, beginning next year; significantly increase the use of recycled content by governments and industry; and reduce the total waste generated in Australia by 10 per cent per person. All of this is important. We also looked forward to the future last year, with Australia's ambitious but achievable target of making 100 per cent of Australian packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025 or earlier. That was something that Les raised with me. He would love to see it brought forward earlier.

We have also got great environment initiatives in Moreton Bay. In the Scarborough Marina we soon will have two new sea bins going in to collect waste. They collect a lot of waste, including 90,000 plastic bags per sea bin. We also have environmental projects rolling out in native creeks. We also have a few other things, but I am out of time. It's a very important issue and I'll keep fighting for it.

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