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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the responses to my questions to Senator Wong today.

I'm very proud to be standing in the Senate today and asking, on behalf of the Australian Greens, the hard questions of this government on an issue that matters to millions of Australians. I know that a lot of senators in this chamber have received correspondence in recent weeks about the collapse of REDcycle, a soft plastics recycling facility. People are furious and frustrated. After all these years of doing the right thing, of collecting their soft plastics and taking them back to the supermarket—which, by the way, they have no choice about at all—they find out that those plastics are being stockpiled by a company that actually can't get them recycled. No-one's buying the recycled content from the recycler.

Big packaging companies produce this plastic waste—this pollution—and companies order it to wrap just about every grocery item in plastic. Nobody wants it but they get it anyway. Do you know why this scheme has collapsed, Mr Deputy President? Do you know why we're about to find out that our 2025 packaging targets have also failed? There are a number of reasons, but the key reason is that the big companies that produce this stuff don't give a rat's arse about what happens to it. They really don't. They have no producer responsibility; they do not care. They put it all back onto the consumer: 'If you use these products, it's up to you to dispose of them.' But what's a consumer to do when there are no options?

I asked Senator Wong today: why is it seemingly beyond these companies to actually come up with a scheme to recycle these soft plastics properly? Actually, that was based on a quote from our Minister for the Environment and Water. Out of frustration, on the day this was announced, Minister Plibersek said, 'It shouldn't be beyond big companies like Coles and Woolworths to come up with a viable solution to soft plastic packaging recycling.' Do you know why they don't care? Because they know the government don't care. They have, since 1998, under the Australian Packaging Covenant, repeatedly failed to meet even the most basic recycling or packaging waste reduction targets, and they have never once been penalised. That's because this scheme is voluntary. It's always been voluntary. There's been no-one in this building or even at a state government level through the COAG process who's been willing to take on the big packaging companies—companies like Coca-Cola and the big grocery companies, who are, may I say, just as a passing comment, big donors to both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party.

The Australian people have had enough. Senator Polley, I'll take that interjection. They have had enough of big governments failing to act on this recycling crisis. We need to ask ourselves: if we find out that the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation, APCO, which is now an accredited voluntary product stewardship scheme under the new act, are not going to meet their 2025 targets—they're three years away, but we were told we would know by the end of this year—what are the government going to do? Are they going to let this pollution continue? Are they going to continue to let down Australians? I hope they do the only thing they can do to fix this crisis—step up and regulate these companies.

Regulating these companies is something the Greens tried to force two years ago in the Senate debate when the legislation came in. We had a tied vote on mandating these targets so that these companies had no choice but to meet them and, if they didn't, there would be consequences. I remind senators—those of you who were here two years ago—that we had a tied vote and it was Senator Hanson who walked away from the deal we thought we had with her to pass mandatory regulatory targets. The government cast the deciding vote from the chair, and we lost that debate. Surprise, surprise! Two years later we've had a massive failure of soft plastic recycling, and we're about to find out that our national targets, run by big business and led by big business through the Packaging Covenant, are also going to fail.

I would ask senators to reflect on this as a final point. The Greens aren't going to stop asking questions on this. We're not going to stop putting up good ideas. We're going to continually needle you until you do something about this—and I say that to both parties. This should be across political lines, because this issue cuts across political lines. All sides of politics want to see better recycling. They want to see waste reduction. They do not want to see plastic pollution in our oceans, killing our marine life.

Question agreed to.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Whish-Wilson, the chair doesn't have a casting vote, for your information.