Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme for Packaging (No Time to Waste) Bill 2026
Senator ALLMAN-PAYNE (Queensland) (09:47): I rise to speak in support of this Greens private senator's bill, the Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme for Packaging (No Time to Waste) Bill 2026. Like my colleagues before me, I want to congratulate Senator Whish-Wilson on bringing this bill before the Senate. I think it's a really fitting way to finish your Senate career and your time in this place, and it's a real honour to stand up in support of it.
This place has the capacity to do really good things, but a lot of the time we spend our time talking about things where people are quite ideologically opposed. But it would seem to me that reducing plastics in our environment is something that shouldn't be too hard for us all to agree on. I had the privilege recently of chairing the Senate inquiry into microplastics and other toxics, and I have to admit to being really shocked by some of the evidence that we heard.
I don't think it's controversial to say that we all know that there's too much plastic in our environment. Most of us know that we want something done about it, but to really understand the extent and nature of the problem was really eye opening not just for me but for other members of the committee. I know that Senator Ananda-Rajah has spoken about this, but to hear evidence that plastic is in every cell of the human body and we don't really understand just what that is doing to us, I thought was really quite shocking.
We went to the University of Adelaide for a site visit and we looked down the microscope at eggs and sperm cells that have plastic in them. Think about that—the unborn child already impacted by plastics before they've even arrived into the world. I think that's something that should really scare us, especially when we don't know the impacts that that's having on childhood and human development.
Researchers think they've got a pretty good idea. They know that it's endocrine disrupting. They know that it has impacts on conditions like cardiovascular diseases and polycystic ovary syndrome, just to name a couple.
Given that we know that these plastic products have become so ubiquitous that they're in our soil, they're in the air and they're in our bodies, that really seems like the perfect issue for us to do something about. Senator Ananda-Rajah put the government's position on the record, saying that the government won't be supporting this bill, and she said that there are a range of issues and challenges, but I put it to the government that we have been talking about dealing with plastic for at least 15 years.
Surely there has to come a time where we stop talking about it and we act. The inquiry that I chaired—the inquiry into microplastics and other toxics—produced a consensus inquiry report. That consensus report, supported by Liberal and coalition senators, said that we need to expand extended producer responsibility schemes in this country, and that is precisely what Senator Whish-Wilson's bill is looking to do.
We all agree that this is a problem and we all agree that we need to expand EPR schemes to help tackle it. So why don't we get on with it? As my colleague Senator Hodgins-May said, the inquiry into the bill heard from the New South Wales EPA that it would take only six to 12 months to get a scheme like this up and running, because the bulk of the work has already been done.
So it's not that hard. We have a recycling industry which, as Senator Whish-Wilson said, already employs 90,000 people in this country, and it is calling for this to be done. This begs the question then: why aren't we getting on and doing it?
The community wants this to happen. The community is concerned about the level of plastic in our environment. When they go to the beach, they see it on the sand dunes.
When they go fishing, they see it out in the water. We've actually tackled some aspects of the plastic problem. I was reflecting just the other day, when I opened my loaf of bread, that we don't have plastic bread tags any more, because they're harmful to our environment and to nature.
And so we said, 'Okay, let's put cardboard ones on.' The sky didn't fall in. We've tackled single-use plastics in our supermarkets. We go and get a recycled paper bag to put our groceries in.
We use paper straws when we go and buy a smoothie. Again, the sky hasn't fallen in, and our bodies and our planet and the other shearwaters and turtles and flora and fauna that we share it with are better for it as well. We heard, during the inquiry into microplastics, about the falling over of the treaty on plastic pollution.
When I questioned one of the witnesses giving evidence who was at that particular convention, they talked about the fact that the fossil fuel industry reps outnumbered the people actually negotiating the treaty by something like three to one. It shouldn't be the case that fossil fuel companies are hijacking action on dealing with the plastic problem. Years ago we realised that asbestos was no good for us.
We've now recognised that silica in stone is no good for us. There's some pretty compelling evidence that the ubiquity of microplastics in our environment is no good for us, and the precautionary approach would say that we need to do something about that now. We're already seeing, as Senator Whish-Wilson so vividly described, the impact of plastics on nature—shearwaters and penguins and other birds with bellies full of plastic—yet that's something that we can work together on pretty easily to prevent.
This bill gives us an opportunity, a framework, to help do that. It makes no sense that we are out on the international stage pushing for action on plastics when we're not doing that here at home. The majority of Australians want us to act on this issue.
We have the capacity to act on this issue. We've already heard that there have been multiple inquiries telling us what needs to be done, and, as leaders in this place, we are the ones—given that, as we said, we've had more than one inquiry that's given a consensus report, we all agree we need to do something about this. So let's get on and do it.
Like my colleagues, I want to thank all of the campaigners and advocates across the country who have consistently pushed this issue. It's not going to go away. We are drowning in plastic; we are drowning in it.
We've been put on notice by the fossil fuel industry saying that they want to make more and more and more of it, because, as the world wakes up to the fact that we cannot continue to burn oil and gas and turbocharge the climate crisis that is well underway, those companies are looking for somewhere else to make profit, and plastics is where they want to go. So we have a choice now.
Do we want to wait for the fossil fuel industry, as they watch the markets for coal and gas collapse as we get deeper and deeper into the climate crisis? Prime Minister Andy Burnham has convened Cobra this week because of the impact of the drought in the UK and Wales. Nuclear power stations in Europe are shutting down because there's not enough water to keep them cool.
People are starting to get concerned about food security. Meanwhile, people in the Global South have been dealing with floods and typhoons and cyclones and drought and heatwaves long before them. We are in the middle of a climate crisis.
When we wake up to that and the market falls out of coal and gas, the fossil fuel industry is going to be turbocharging its efforts to make sure that plastic production goes through the roof. We have an opportunity to get ahead of that. We have an opportunity to put in place an extended producer responsibility scheme that the packaging industry wants, that the recycling industry, which supports over 90,000 jobs in this country, wants, that the community wants, and that people across this Senate want, as more than one report has said.
We have an opportunity to get that done. So my request to this chamber, given that across the room, across our parties, we know we have a willingness to tackle this problem and we've recognised the issue, is that we work together to get it done. I don't want to see children born with plastic in their bodies as they enter the world.
I don't want to keep seeing couples struggling to conceive because the level of microplastics in their body has affected their fertility. I don't want to see people suffering from increases of cancer, cardiovascular disease and other endocrine disorders because there's a really good chance that microplastics are causing those things. I don't want to see penguins and shearwaters and other birds and animals dying because they're starving because their parents are mistakenly feeding them plastic or because they've had a plastic noose around their neck.
These are all things that we have the power in this chamber to tackle. So I implore you. The work has been done.
The bill is on the table. Let's work together, even if we have to amend it to find a way to pass it.