David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Tuggeranong Archery Club was abuzz on Saturday with the Invictus Australia inaugural Defence Community Sports Day. Around 300 families registered and came along to have a try of some Invictus Games sports, including wheelchair rugby league, archery, pickleball, bowls, indoor rowing, table tennis and more. There were mums and dads drawing back bows, kids on the rowing machines racing the clocks and families playing against each other in wheelchair rugby. It was a lot of fun. We even had a special Bhutanese archery display, which has to be seen to be truly appreciated. Next year in February there will be an international competition at the Tuggeranong Archery Club, so mark that in your calendar now.

Heaps of volunteers worked tirelessly to facilitate the day: cooking the sausage sizzle, directing the traffic, preparing the venue and lots more. There were around 10 ex-services organisations that set up and provided activities for the kids in addition to information about their services. It was a great collaboration. Invictus Australia's mission is to improve the health, wellbeing and quality of life of current and former serving veterans and their families through ongoing involvement with sport and recreation. We know sport is a powerful tool in aiding veterans in all aspects of life, from rehabilitation to tackling social isolation and finding purpose. Finally, a special mention to the organising committee from Invictus Australia and particularly to Invictus legends Ben and Steve.

Around 740,000 mattresses end up in landfill each year. Here in the ACT we churned through close to 50,000 mattresses last year. Yesterday, with the Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek MP, and the members for Fenner and Canberra, I visited Soft Landing, a great social enterprise based in Hume in Bean that is doing its best to pull apart mattresses to re-use. But some mattress components can't be easily recycled, and some mattress designs are currently completely unrecyclable and just go into landfill. Soft Landing is also providing important pathways back into work for many Canberrans who have experienced employment challenges and barriers.

Yesterday the minister announced that mattresses have now been added to the minister's product stewardship priority list. This calls on industry to take full responsibility for the full life cycle of their products. That means ensuring the development, design, manufacture, import, sale, use and recovery of materials and products is more sustainable. While this will take some time, it will act with the great work of organisations like Soft Landing to substantially decrease the amount of product that goes to landfill while ensuring much more of the material is then recycled.