QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator HODGINS-MAY (Victoria) (15:22): I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for the Environment and Water (Murray Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to Labor's monumental backflip on bringing in a federally mandated packaging scheme. Only this Labor government could look at a policy this straightforward, look at the evidence, hear the overwhelming support for reform and say yeah-nah.
This reform is backed by environmental groups. It is backed by recyclers and the waste industry. It is backed by packaging producers and businesses that want a level playing field.
Australians themselves have told government through their own consultation that they want action and that they expect action. And what does Labor say? 'Yeah-nah, not today. Probably not tomorrow either.' What a load of garbage from a government that itself conceded that voluntary packaging schemes do not work.
The principle for reform is so incredibly simple. If you produce packaging, you should be responsible for what happens to it from cradle to grave. You shouldn't be able to put millions of tonnes of plastic packaging into the Australian market, make your profit and then make households foot the bill through council rates and waste charges.
That is what the current system does. That is what this Labor government is willing to let continue. When it isn't consumers paying the price, it's our environment.
It's our oceans, our rivers, our wildlife, and Labor's response is to keep kicking that can down the road. Minister Watt talked about Labor being the only government that has ever taken action on waste and recycling. Well, Minister, those actions speak for themselves.
The voluntary approach has failed. Australia was supposed to have 100 per cent of packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025—last year. We reached 86 per cent.
We were supposed to recycle or compost 70 per cent of plastic packaging. We reached just 20 per cent. We were 50 per cent short.
We are leading the world in one of the sorriest leaderboards there is, and that is the amount of plastic waste that we produce. Even APCO, the organisation responsible for driving these packaging targets, is now advocating for nationally consistent regulation and extended producer responsibility because the current system isn't working. They acknowledge that.
When the minister tells us, insults us, with comments that Labor has acted, the results or lack thereof simply speak for themselves. While the minister pontificated to me and patted himself on the back for what a good job he thinks he's done, the recycling industry was sitting in here in the gallery. They were listening to his dribble and his avoidance.
What an embarrassment he brought to this place today. Industry is demanding urgent action. Environmental groups want reform.
They want less waste. Packaging companies want certainty. Australians want less waste in their rivers, in their bodies, in their local environments.
Why doesn't Labor? Minister, you and I both have increasing amounts of microplastics in our bodies, as much as 4,800 micrograms of microplastic per gram of brain tissue. After the answers I heard from the minister, I do wonder if he's got a bit more in each brain cell.
The minister was quick to call out the number of recycling centres that have opened under Labor but failed to mention that Australia's plastic recycling facilities are operating at around only half of their available capacity. I would suggest that this minister focuses less on the Greens, who, by the way, have been fighting for this reform since before he was even elected to this place, and more on mandating that plastic packaging actually reaches these plants.
Then there's the question the minister, of course, didn't want to answer. He really didn't like this one. It comes down to following the money.
Pratt Holdings, one of Labor's biggest corporate donors, owns Visy, a major packaging company that has opposed mandatory packaging reform. Australians are entitled to ask whether this has anything to do with Labor's backflip away from a reform that it has spent years promising and to ask whether it was a captain's call from the very top, because, frankly, nothing else makes sense.
This should be a no-brainer. Make producers responsible for the plastic waste that they are producing. Build a functioning recycling industry.
Stop dumping those costs onto families and onto households. Finally, deliver the mandatory national packaging scheme that Labor promised. Question agreed to.