Division Description Changes — Bills — Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020, Recycling and Waste Reduction (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2020, Recycling and Waste Reduction Charges (General) Bill 2020, Recycling and Waste Reduction Charges (Customs) Bill 2020, Recycling and Waste Reduction Charges (Excise) Bill 2020; Second Reading — 7th Dec 2020

Change	Division
senate vote 2020-12-07#13 Edited by mackay staff on 2022-07-22 15:12:17	Title Bills — Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020, Recycling and Waste Reduction (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2020, Recycling and Waste Reduction Charges (General) Bill 2020, Recycling and Waste Reduction Charges (Customs) Bill 2020, Recycling and Waste Reduction Charges (Excise) Bill 2020; Second Reading Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and others - Second Reading - Keep second reading motion unchanged Description ~~<p class="speaker">Lidia Thorpe</p>~~ <p>For the last three years, the government have presided over bushfires, climate change, mass extinction and a major waste crisis without taking meaningful action. Meanwhile, our oceans, our rivers, our lands and our country are being choked with waste. The Greens have been consistent in this parliament about what needs to be done. More importantly, we've been working with grassroots mobs and community groups fighting to end plastic pollution in our oceans, rivers and lands. Senator Ludlam in 2009 introduced a private member's bill for a mandatory cash-for-containers scheme, but those opposite voted it down in 2013. If we had a good and caring government, one that wasn't there for themselves but actually cared for country, then they would have strengthened our response to the waste crisis and addressed how we produce and consume waste, particularly plastics. Every single bit of plastic that anyone has ever used still exists, and it's choking our country.</p> The majority voted against an amendment to the usual second reading motion, which is "that these bills be read a second time." To read a bill a [second time](https://peo.gov.au/understand-our-parliament/how-parliament-works/bills-and-laws/making-a-law-in-the-australian-parliament/) is to agree with its main idea. Because this amendment failed, the usual second reading motion will remain unchanged. ### Amendment text *> A*t the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate: > *> (a) agrees that waste-to-energy incineration has no place in a sustainable zero waste management** and circular economy agenda; and* > *> (b) calls on the Government to rule ou*t any financial or regulatory support for waste-to-energy incineration". <p>The government are making a big song and dance about this bill, flashing it around to take some heat off them while they take a chainsaw to our national environment laws, in some instances literally, like the chainsaws that tore through Djab Wurrung country. Do not be fooled. This is the first national waste legislation we have seen in over 10 years. This legislation, if passed, will be a massive missed opportunity, as it is without substantive amendments. It doesn't address plastic packaging. Think about that. The biggest reform in a decade to go through this place about the waste that we create doesn't address plastic packaging, the actual source of the problem and why our rivers and oceans are being choked in the first place. Here we are with a dodgy bill that is all headline and no substance. That's what happens when you have a government that is led by the marketing department. A good and caring government would do something about protecting our oceans and waterways from plastics. In the absence of that government, it's up to the Greens to amend this bill to make the issue of plastic pollution a priority. More needs to be done, and we are here to do it. I urge the government to agree to our amendments, which make sensible improvements to the bills to make a real difference to our oceans, our rivers, our lands and our waters.</p> <p>First Nations people cared for country, lands and waters because we are connected to them in ways most people could never, ever understand. When this country was colonised its colonisers and settlers came in here thinking that this was their land and that they had nothing to learn from its First Peoples. It's only taken 240 years to trash, burn and desecrate our country. We lived, thrived, survived and sustained for thousands and thousands of generations. The colonisers came and you are all beneficiaries of the stolen wealth of this country, It took only a couple of hundred years for you to destroy it all, and now we've got the climate emergency.</p> <p>We know a thing or two about managing country and looking after country. You might want to start listening to the First Peoples of the land. We know how to do it. We even have three- and four-year-old kids talking about how we need to reduce plastic. If you go to any kindergarten—in fact, you might want to learn from this—or preschool, you'll find that they're teaching our children how bad plastic straws are. I have my granddaughters FaceTiming me to show me their new recyclable straws and other things they're getting from their kindergartens, because that's where they are getting a real education. Obviously, that wasn't available to our government members at the time when they were at kinder, and that's why plastic is not a big concern for them. Listen to us and learn from us, or go to kindergartens and learn from the kids. Your first step should be agreeing to our amendments to this bill and listening to the three- and four-year-olds, who would also agree, because, if we look after country, country will look after us.</p> ~~<p class="speaker">Jordon Steele-John</p>~~ <p>In speaking to the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and related bills, this legislative monument to this government's lack of ambition, I wouldn't be able to do justice to this contribution without first acknowledging my esteemed colleague Senator Whish-Wilson, the good senator from Tasmania, or, as he's known by those who follow him on Instagram and Twitter, the 'Senator Surfer' himself. Pete's a good mate of mine. We've worked together for a good many years now, and I have to say in all seriousness that I don't think there is anybody who quite matches his passion for the oceans, his passion for our precious places and his desire to see, particularly, our rivers and oceans freed of the scourge of plastics that so choke them all around the planet. We know that the issue of plastics, including microplastics, in our oceans is of great urgency, both as something that is affecting our precious places and their livability for the countless creatures that call them home and because the presence of plastic in our food chains is leading to negative health impacts for those in our communities. We know that if we don't take action here in Australia, in the Asia-Pacific and, indeed, globally then our oceans will become choked and our precious places will become polluted with plastic. Indeed, global consumption of plastic is on track to triple by 2040.</p> <p>Eighty per cent of marine debris is plastic and 40 per cent of plastic is single use, with an average lifespan of just 12 minutes. It's an absolute disgrace. It is estimated that at least eight million tonnes of plastic makes its way into our oceans every year, totalling 80 per cent of marine debris. Numerous studies have shown that the majority of plastic pollution found on Australian beaches is produced and consumed locally. We are polluting our own blue backyard. We are only recycling 16 per cent of plastic packaging as of this current moment. So what we have is a global challenge of significant proportion, one which is being, I think it is fair to say, disproportionately contributed to by the Asia-Pacific region. And we have a situation where Australia, as a member of that region, is not only failing to do its part; it is currently disproportionately contributing to the problem. In the face of this global and regional challenge we have this piece of legislation, much vaunted by the Prime Minister and often deployed, in my opinion, as a distraction from the great, howling, corporately funded void. Where more substantive environmental and climate based policy should be we have this legislation around which a big game is talked, around which the Prime Minister likes to draw great attention.</p> <p>There are some quite fine aspirations and intentions lying behind certain aspects of this bill. It is necessary that we ban the exportation of our waste overseas, and this is the first time that legislation in relation to a national approach to waste has come before the parliament in a decade. But it is very important not to be fooled by the hype and the bluster; this is a massive missed opportunity, and if passed in its current form that missed opportunity will only increase.</p> <p>If the government was serious about recycling and waste reduction, we would have seen a lot more in this bill, particularly in relation to plastics. Critically, if we were serious about both addressing this problem and doing so in a way that is socially just, putting the responsibility of that addressing fairly and squarely on those who generated it and caused this crisis most, we would see aspects within this legislation that would make corporations responsible for their contribution to this massive problem, to the work and the vandalism environmentally that they have done to our oceans and to our broader natural environment. We see none of these aspects in this legislation.</p> <p>This legislation seeks to ban the national export of waste while putting in place none of the measures needed to create and support a national recycling industry here in Australia—a national recycling industry which would create thousands upon thousands of good jobs. This is a wasted opportunity that is being wasted on behest of massive corporations that are donors to the Liberal Party—shock, horror, aghast; who'd have thunk it! But it is really worth zeroing back in on the proposition at the heart of this legislation, that being that you can ban the export of these types of waste in the absence of the setting up of an effective national structure to then manage that waste—something which is particularly egregious given that those that understand recycling and waste management have been desperately lobbying the government. Senator Whish-Wilson has informed me on many occasions of the effort and work done by the industry to attempt to get the government to the table ahead of what was a very easily foreseeable decision on behalf of countries like China to stop taking our waste. But the government refused to listen, refused to engage, and now, even today, presents a piece of legislation which doesn't really do the job.</p> <p>After reaching for a way to clearly explain what is fundamentally proposed in this bill, I ask people to imagine how they would feel and what their view would be should they have complained for a decade or more about having a leaking sewer system in their house and if, after 10 years, a plumber finally comes out to their place and says: 'Oh, you've got a pretty busted pipe there. The solution, in my view, is just to shut off your access to water, shut off your access to the toilet and shit on the floor.' Now, that would not be something that folks would accept, and yet that is the proposition at the heart of this legislation—that we stop sending this stuff overseas—</p> ~~<p class="speaker">Claire Chandler</p>~~ ~~<p>Order! Senator Steele-John, I ask you to consider your language and its appropriate use in the chamber, please.</p>~~ ~~<p class="speaker">Jordon Steele-John</p>~~ <p>Thank you, Acting Deputy President. That's the contention at the centre of this bill—that we stop sending our waste overseas and that we keep it here while doing nothing to address the core reasons that it's created and do not a damn thing, not a damn thing, to hold corporations to account for their creation of this waste, for building into the system wasteful processes that make it more difficult to care for and manage waste. You will not see a single line in this bill that talks about product stewardship, one of the central tenets of addressing waste and recycling. There is nowhere near enough emphasis on making sure that corporations that manufacture and profit from the creation of wasteful products actually do their bit in cleaning up the outcome.</p> <p>I would also like to speak—and I will zero back in on this during the committee stage of the debate, with the leave of my good Tasmanian colleague—on an often overlooked element of this debate, and that is that there are folks in our community for whom certain plastic products are not a mere convenience but indeed a mobility aid. Here, of course, I talk about plastic straws and the need by many disabled people in our community to utilise plastic straws in our consumption of food and beverages and what have you. I said that rather robotically; what I should say is that sometimes you need a plastic straw to be able to go out of an evening and smash a JD with your mates! That's just the way it works. The reality is that the renewable, recyclable equivalents of straws—reusable straws, for instance—are not yet up to scratch to be able to replace their plastic counterparts. There are also challenges when it comes to the safety of some straw replacements. Metal straws, for instance, might result in harm to folks in our community who experience periodic spasmodic muscle episodes.</p> <p>As you can imagine, we in the Greens have heard very clearly from the disability community about the need to address these issues appropriately in any legislation in these areas, recognising that fundamentally, centrally, the need, the pressure—the emphasis, the expectation—to create alternative solutions should fall upon manufacturers. It should not be the responsibility of disabled people to advocate their right to be able to consume food and liquid like the rest of the community. Although we must limit the use of plastic products to the greatest degree possible, we must do so while continuing to allow disabled people to use some of them as the necessary mobility aid that they are for so many people. That is why, within the amendments being moved by Senator Whish-Wilson in the course of this debate, there will be targeted exemptions created for the purpose of allowing these products to still be accessed and used by disabled people when they need them. I shall talk in more detail about those exemptions during the committee stage, but, for the second reading period of the debate, I think I shall leave it there.</p> ~~<p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>~~

~~Lidia Thorpe~~
For the last three years, the government have presided over bushfires, climate change, mass extinction and a major waste crisis without taking meaningful action. Meanwhile, our oceans, our rivers, our lands and our country are being choked with waste. The Greens have been consistent in this parliament about what needs to be done. More importantly, we've been working with grassroots mobs and community groups fighting to end plastic pollution in our oceans, rivers and lands. Senator Ludlam in 2009 introduced a private member's bill for a mandatory cash-for-containers scheme, but those opposite voted it down in 2013. If we had a good and caring government, one that wasn't there for themselves but actually cared for country, then they would have strengthened our response to the waste crisis and addressed how we produce and consume waste, particularly plastics. Every single bit of plastic that anyone has ever used still exists, and it's choking our country.
The majority voted against an amendment to the usual second reading motion, which is "*that these bills be read a second time*." To read a bill a [second time](https://peo.gov.au/understand-our-parliament/how-parliament-works/bills-and-laws/making-a-law-in-the-australian-parliament/) is to agree with its main idea. Because this amendment failed, the usual second reading motion will remain unchanged.
### Amendment text
> *At the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate:*
>
> *(a) agrees that waste-to-energy incineration has no place in a sustainable zero waste management and circular economy agenda; and*
>
> *(b) calls on the Government to rule out any financial or regulatory support for waste-to-energy incineration".*
The government are making a big song and dance about this bill, flashing it around to take some heat off them while they take a chainsaw to our national environment laws, in some instances literally, like the chainsaws that tore through Djab Wurrung country. Do not be fooled. This is the first national waste legislation we have seen in over 10 years. This legislation, if passed, will be a massive missed opportunity, as it is without substantive amendments. It doesn't address plastic packaging. Think about that. The biggest reform in a decade to go through this place about the waste that we create doesn't address plastic packaging, the actual source of the problem and why our rivers and oceans are being choked in the first place. Here we are with a dodgy bill that is all headline and no substance. That's what happens when you have a government that is led by the marketing department. A good and caring government would do something about protecting our oceans and waterways from plastics. In the absence of that government, it's up to the Greens to amend this bill to make the issue of plastic pollution a priority. More needs to be done, and we are here to do it. I urge the government to agree to our amendments, which make sensible improvements to the bills to make a real difference to our oceans, our rivers, our lands and our waters.
First Nations people cared for country, lands and waters because we are connected to them in ways most people could never, ever understand. When this country was colonised its colonisers and settlers came in here thinking that this was their land and that they had nothing to learn from its First Peoples. It's only taken 240 years to trash, burn and desecrate our country. We lived, thrived, survived and sustained for thousands and thousands of generations. The colonisers came and you are all beneficiaries of the stolen wealth of this country, It took only a couple of hundred years for you to destroy it all, and now we've got the climate emergency.
We know a thing or two about managing country and looking after country. You might want to start listening to the First Peoples of the land. We know how to do it. We even have three- and four-year-old kids talking about how we need to reduce plastic. If you go to any kindergarten—in fact, you might want to learn from this—or preschool, you'll find that they're teaching our children how bad plastic straws are. I have my granddaughters FaceTiming me to show me their new recyclable straws and other things they're getting from their kindergartens, because that's where they are getting a real education. Obviously, that wasn't available to our government members at the time when they were at kinder, and that's why plastic is not a big concern for them. Listen to us and learn from us, or go to kindergartens and learn from the kids. Your first step should be agreeing to our amendments to this bill and listening to the three- and four-year-olds, who would also agree, because, if we look after country, country will look after us.
~~Jordon Steele-John~~
In speaking to the Recycling and Waste Reduction Bill 2020 and related bills, this legislative monument to this government's lack of ambition, I wouldn't be able to do justice to this contribution without first acknowledging my esteemed colleague Senator Whish-Wilson, the good senator from Tasmania, or, as he's known by those who follow him on Instagram and Twitter, the 'Senator Surfer' himself. Pete's a good mate of mine. We've worked together for a good many years now, and I have to say in all seriousness that I don't think there is anybody who quite matches his passion for the oceans, his passion for our precious places and his desire to see, particularly, our rivers and oceans freed of the scourge of plastics that so choke them all around the planet. We know that the issue of plastics, including microplastics, in our oceans is of great urgency, both as something that is affecting our precious places and their livability for the countless creatures that call them home and because the presence of plastic in our food chains is leading to negative health impacts for those in our communities. We know that if we don't take action here in Australia, in the Asia-Pacific and, indeed, globally then our oceans will become choked and our precious places will become polluted with plastic. Indeed, global consumption of plastic is on track to triple by 2040.
Eighty per cent of marine debris is plastic and 40 per cent of plastic is single use, with an average lifespan of just 12 minutes. It's an absolute disgrace. It is estimated that at least eight million tonnes of plastic makes its way into our oceans every year, totalling 80 per cent of marine debris. Numerous studies have shown that the majority of plastic pollution found on Australian beaches is produced and consumed locally. We are polluting our own blue backyard. We are only recycling 16 per cent of plastic packaging as of this current moment. So what we have is a global challenge of significant proportion, one which is being, I think it is fair to say, disproportionately contributed to by the Asia-Pacific region. And we have a situation where Australia, as a member of that region, is not only failing to do its part; it is currently disproportionately contributing to the problem. In the face of this global and regional challenge we have this piece of legislation, much vaunted by the Prime Minister and often deployed, in my opinion, as a distraction from the great, howling, corporately funded void. Where more substantive environmental and climate based policy should be we have this legislation around which a big game is talked, around which the Prime Minister likes to draw great attention.
There are some quite fine aspirations and intentions lying behind certain aspects of this bill. It is necessary that we ban the exportation of our waste overseas, and this is the first time that legislation in relation to a national approach to waste has come before the parliament in a decade. But it is very important not to be fooled by the hype and the bluster; this is a massive missed opportunity, and if passed in its current form that missed opportunity will only increase.
If the government was serious about recycling and waste reduction, we would have seen a lot more in this bill, particularly in relation to plastics. Critically, if we were serious about both addressing this problem and doing so in a way that is socially just, putting the responsibility of that addressing fairly and squarely on those who generated it and caused this crisis most, we would see aspects within this legislation that would make corporations responsible for their contribution to this massive problem, to the work and the vandalism environmentally that they have done to our oceans and to our broader natural environment. We see none of these aspects in this legislation.
This legislation seeks to ban the national export of waste while putting in place none of the measures needed to create and support a national recycling industry here in Australia—a national recycling industry which would create thousands upon thousands of good jobs. This is a wasted opportunity that is being wasted on behest of massive corporations that are donors to the Liberal Party—shock, horror, aghast; who'd have thunk it! But it is really worth zeroing back in on the proposition at the heart of this legislation, that being that you can ban the export of these types of waste in the absence of the setting up of an effective national structure to then manage that waste—something which is particularly egregious given that those that understand recycling and waste management have been desperately lobbying the government. Senator Whish-Wilson has informed me on many occasions of the effort and work done by the industry to attempt to get the government to the table ahead of what was a very easily foreseeable decision on behalf of countries like China to stop taking our waste. But the government refused to listen, refused to engage, and now, even today, presents a piece of legislation which doesn't really do the job.
After reaching for a way to clearly explain what is fundamentally proposed in this bill, I ask people to imagine how they would feel and what their view would be should they have complained for a decade or more about having a leaking sewer system in their house and if, after 10 years, a plumber finally comes out to their place and says: 'Oh, you've got a pretty busted pipe there. The solution, in my view, is just to shut off your access to water, shut off your access to the toilet and shit on the floor.' Now, that would not be something that folks would accept, and yet that is the proposition at the heart of this legislation—that we stop sending this stuff overseas—
~~Claire Chandler~~
~~Order! Senator Steele-John, I ask you to consider your language and its appropriate use in the chamber, please.~~
~~Jordon Steele-John~~
Thank you, Acting Deputy President. That's the contention at the centre of this bill—that we stop sending our waste overseas and that we keep it here while doing nothing to address the core reasons that it's created and do not a damn thing, not a damn thing, to hold corporations to account for their creation of this waste, for building into the system wasteful processes that make it more difficult to care for and manage waste. You will not see a single line in this bill that talks about product stewardship, one of the central tenets of addressing waste and recycling. There is nowhere near enough emphasis on making sure that corporations that manufacture and profit from the creation of wasteful products actually do their bit in cleaning up the outcome.
I would also like to speak—and I will zero back in on this during the committee stage of the debate, with the leave of my good Tasmanian colleague—on an often overlooked element of this debate, and that is that there are folks in our community for whom certain plastic products are not a mere convenience but indeed a mobility aid. Here, of course, I talk about plastic straws and the need by many disabled people in our community to utilise plastic straws in our consumption of food and beverages and what have you. I said that rather robotically; what I should say is that sometimes you need a plastic straw to be able to go out of an evening and smash a JD with your mates! That's just the way it works. The reality is that the renewable, recyclable equivalents of straws—reusable straws, for instance—are not yet up to scratch to be able to replace their plastic counterparts. There are also challenges when it comes to the safety of some straw replacements. Metal straws, for instance, might result in harm to folks in our community who experience periodic spasmodic muscle episodes.
As you can imagine, we in the Greens have heard very clearly from the disability community about the need to address these issues appropriately in any legislation in these areas, recognising that fundamentally, centrally, the need, the pressure—the emphasis, the expectation—to create alternative solutions should fall upon manufacturers. It should not be the responsibility of disabled people to advocate their right to be able to consume food and liquid like the rest of the community. Although we must limit the use of plastic products to the greatest degree possible, we must do so while continuing to allow disabled people to use some of them as the necessary mobility aid that they are for so many people. That is why, within the amendments being moved by Senator Whish-Wilson in the course of this debate, there will be targeted exemptions created for the purpose of allowing these products to still be accessed and used by disabled people when they need them. I shall talk in more detail about those exemptions during the committee stage, but, for the second reading period of the debate, I think I shall leave it there.
~~Long debate text truncated.~~