Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme for Packaging (No Time to Waste) Bill 2026
Senator ANANDA-RAJAH (Victoria) (09:16): Senator Whish-Wilson, you are a fierce advocate for the environment and particularly the marine environment. You're a great person. I know this is a topic that is so close to your heart.
It is so close to the heart of so many Australians, including people in this chamber and certainly people in the government. The government will not be supporting this bill, the Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme for Packaging (No Time to Waste) Bill 2026. However, we recognise the problems that we have with plastic.
We are drowning in plastic. I'm going to wear my environmental hat, and I'm going to wear my medical hat. I was recently on the community affairs committee's microplastics inquiry, and I heard some truly sobering and alarming testimony, and I did my own personal research.
With respect to plastics, we are in the midst of a pandemic of plastic. With regard to microplastics and nanoplastics, they are ubiquitous. They are all over the environment.
When you go looking for them, you will find them. They're in the soil. They're in the air that we breathe.
They're in the clothes that we wear; polyester is derived from plastics. Our foods are wrapped in plastic. And, when you go looking in the human body, you actually find plastic—microplastics—in every single organ of the body and in our fluids.
It's in the brain, the placenta, the lungs, the heart and the musculature. It's in semen. In terms of the health problems that are associated with microplastics and nanoplastics, plastics are linked to a litany of problems from in utero all the way to childhood and adulthood.
This has probably been best studied by the Minderoo Foundation, who recently, in March this year, published a paper in Nature. Minderoo have done a power of work. We heard testimony from Minderoo and scientists and medical specialists.
These microplastics—or plastics in general—have about 16,000 chemicals. The chemicals are loosely bound to a polymer matrix. In other words, once these are ingested into the body, the chemicals can leach out into the body, and it's that leaching out which causes problems.
And it's not just PFAS, folks. It's 16,000 chemicals. We don't really understand what most of these chemicals do to the body, but we've got some clues.
We know that these are endocrine disruptors, so they damage the endocrine system. By the way, our endocrine system means tiny, tiny chemical amounts of hormones that make our body function. So you have something in there that disrupts the hormonal axis.
It leads to all kinds of knock-on effects. One of them is infertility. We heard testimony that, in the last 30 years, IVF success rates in Australia have not shifted.
We spend billions on in vitro fertilisation, but success rates have not shifted. Why? Has it something to do with microplastics and their transmission across the placenta in what was termed by a Minderoo expert as 'toxic trespass'—that these chemicals are crossing the placenta and may in some way be then harming the growing fetus?
If I read out the list, you would all be in the foetal position, but I'm going to read out some of the harms: in utero miscarriage, preterm birth, low birth weight, small head size, genital malformation, asthma, wheeze, bronchitis. In childhood there are ADHD, autism, obesity, asthma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma—a whole litany of problems as long as my arm. In adulthood that list gets even bigger.
It is linked to endometriosis, uterine fibroids, sperm concentration and quality problems, diabetes, PCOS, insulin-resistant type-two diabetes—and it goes on and on and on. These are linked. They are not necessarily causal but are linked.
What was also alarming from this inquiry that we did was that we heard testimony that big oil is planning on increasing plastic production. In fact, this was in the Lancet. It was published in the Lancet last year.
The Lancet Countdown on Health and Plastics produced a weighty document, and there was one passage that jumped out at me. It basically said that the Saudi Arabian oil company plans to channel about one-third of its oil production to plastics and petrochemicals by 2030. They are pivoting.
They're pivoting away from oil and fuel to plastic production. They're looking for another market. What is driving this is, overwhelmingly, single-use plastics.
We've got to get ahead of this. One thing that was also evident was that we had a really good discussion with the CEO of the Australian Council of Recycling, and I'm going to read from the Hansard of 20 March this year. And this was her view with regard to the extended producer responsibility scheme, which has been operating in Europe for decades.
The problem is: Even in Europe over the last 18 months or so they've lost about a million tonnes of processing capacity for recycled plastic because the demand for the product hasn't been there and you can buy it much more cheaply offshore. So, whilst we really need extended producer responsibility for packaging, and, by the way, for most manufactured products, we also need to see much stronger procurement drivers to make sure that what we remake here has a market and we can keep that system viable.
In other words, when you talk about plastic—and she laid it out for us—you're talking about three components: collection, processing and then markets. Where this has fallen down in Europe is in the market side. Because there hasn't been a market for recycled plastic, it has meant that they've had an overcapacity, plants have shut down and they've lost one million tonnes of recycling capacity.
That's in Hansard. The reason for that is, of course, because recycled plastic is more expensive than virgin plastic. This is why Saudi Arabian oil wants to churn out more plastic.
It's going to make them money, right? But it's our job as a government and as a parliament to figure out a holistic approach to this that will ensure that it actually works and we land this. That means that we have to collaborate and consult widely with industry and with the states and territories as well, because they collect these items.
It's not as easy as just pulling one single lever, calling it the EPR and saying, 'Job done,' because we've seen in Europe that their history has shown that, without the market signals to procure this recycled plastic at a higher cost, the whole system can fall over. In terms of Australia's response, we should be incredibly proud of the advocacy led by former environment minister Tanya Plibersek and now Minister Murray Watt.
Within a few months of our forming government in 2022, in November of 2022, Australia joined the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution. This is a coalition of over 100 countries from all continents around the world. There is a recognition around the world that we have a pandemic of plastic.
Actually, we heard testimony during this inquiry that Australia is relatively 'clean' when it comes to plastic, which tells you that automatically it is much, much worse elsewhere. In the Pacific islands and in South-East Asia, there are rivers literally clogged with plastic. So we have to work globally to reduce the supply of plastic right at its source.
To that end, Australia also supported the Global Plastics Treaty, and we were very vocal in wanting it to pass. We were very vocal, staunch supporters of this measure. But, unfortunately, talks broke down in August of last year, and it was kiboshed by the big petro states: Saudi Arabia, the US and Kuwait—no surprise there.
Had that plastics treaty actually passed, it would have led—and this is the nub of it. It's not just about recycling, folks. Recycling doesn't fix this problem.
It's about actually committing to reducing plastic production and putting in restrictions. In allowing that to happen, you then create space for alternatives—bioplastics, for example. These are plastics or plastic-like materials that are derived from seaweed and other types of biodegradable materials.
As a committee, we also saw evidence from scientists here in Australia who are developing these kinds of materials. They are already there. They need a market.
They need to have space created so that these alternatives can be used by Australians and by businesses and hospitals, which are huge producers of plastic waste around the country. But they're crowded out because virgin plastic is so cheap. So we've got to get to the source, and that will require, I think, global cooperation and countries standing up to these big petro states and fossil fuel interests.
Australia has nailed its colours to the mast in that regard. We want this to pass, and we're going to have to work now in alternative channels to figure out a way we can land this Global Plastics Treaty. But talking about this problem is part of the solution.
Mobilising Australians and the global community to back this kind of treaty is incredibly important. That's why I thank you for your sustained advocacy in this space. I know it will disappoint you that we're not going to support this bill, but understand that we get it.
We get the problems here, but we want to work in a collaborative way in order to land a solution that will actually have teeth and be effective and will not just deal with plastic recycling, which is—and this should really be the take-home message—not the full solution. It's about stopping this at its source and calling out those fossil fuel interests who are looking for new markets, and that's going to take a global effort.
I might stop there.