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

Thank you. Now is not the time to disband the Product Stewardship Advisory Group. If you go back and have a look at the Product Stewardship Act 2011 and ask yourself what it has achieved in this country, I'm sad to report it has achieved very little. There have been some schemes, like e-waste, which I have already talked about in this speech, that have worked very well. There are others that have been totally unsatisfactory, such as for tyres. However, when we look at schemes that haven't even got off the ground yet, like container deposit schemes, we have seen a state-based approach. The Senate has done fantastic work recommending that the federal government step in and take a nationally coordinated approach to collecting cans and bottles. We know plastic bottles make up nearly half of the plastic we find on our beaches and in our oceans—it is an absolute killer of marine life. It is a toxic tide of plastic that's choking our oceans. It is coming from our waste, and we don't have a holistic way to manage that in this country.

We'll have bans, hopefully nationally, on plastic bags and microbeads. Who's actually got a plan for targeting the reduction of plastic that we use in this country? That's what product stewardship schemes do. They include the producers of these waste products, all levels of government and the consumer. I've got to say that this is very disappointing, given that we saw the UK Prime Minister come out over Christmas and declare her own war on waste—it was editorialised in the Agethat goes beyond plastic bags. It is a reminder for this country that we need a holistic approach to waste management. The UK has declared their war on waste. They've set a target for the reduction in the use of plastics by 2025, and they already have some bold ambitions in other areas.

We saw Indonesia, also over the Christmas break, talk about their war on waste and their targets. This is something that's been discussed at the World Economic Forum and at the United Nations. The scourge of plastic pollution and other marine debris in our ocean is one of the biggest global pollution threats we face. It is absolutely choking our ocean and turning it into a plastic soup. We're finding microplastics in plankton in the Antarctic. It is that pervasive, and we're doing nothing about it. Product stewardship schemes are critical to taking a national coordinated approach. It would be nice to see some federal leadership on these issues from this current government, because they have been missing in action on the war on waste.

Let's talk about Victoria. I was down there recently with the Senate, chairing the committee that's looking at how we can have better waste recycling in this country across the board. Victoria is on the verge of a crisis. I use that word very carefully. The Age has also been writing numerous stories about the problems in Victoria. Since China said that its going to stop accepting our waste recycling products—nearly 30 per cent of our plastics go to China—we've suddenly got a situation in this country where we don't know what to do with it. Are we going to landfill it, or are we going to use the funds from the levies that were set up to be reinvested in this industry in order to find solutions to not just recycle but use other products instead of plastic? We've got a situation now where some of our key recyclers are not committing to taking on any more kerbside recycling products in Victoria. What do we do then? Who's got a plan for this? Where's our holistic approach to waste reduction?

We've seen illegal dumping in New South Wales. Four Corners showed an expose on the corruption that was involved in that and all the dodgy goings on, which the committee is also looking at. We have no national plan. We barely even have a state based plan for solving waste in this country. Thank God the ABC is running their war on waste and making this a public issue. It's doing a really good job in getting the public behind it and wanting to see a plan and wanting to see their parliament and politicians taking this situation seriously.

Senator Urquhart, who is in the chamber today, was on—and I think she may have chaired—the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee when it did it's fantastic work of looking at how the federal government needs to do a lot more to tackle the issue of the toxic tide of waste, especially waste that's making its way into our ocean, polluting our waterways and turning our oceans into a plastic soup. We have to start somewhere. It has to be simple. There needs to be leadership and there needs to be a scheme.

The product stewardship schemes that we're abolishing in this legislation are absolutely critical. No matter what kind of waste stream you are looking at, the advisory groups play a critical function. They've been underused. They've been ignored. Saying they haven't been funded and they're not working is not an excuse for getting rid of them today. What we should be doing is increasing funding to them, getting them active and getting a plan for reducing waste in this country that we can all get behind and that actually works. We should stop talking about it and actually get on and do it.