Portfolio Committee No. 7 - Planning and Environment
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REPORT ON PROCEEDINGS BEFORE PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE NO. 7 - PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENT WASTE AVOIDANCE AND RESOURCE RECOVERY AMENDMENT (PLASTICS REDUCTION) BILL 2021 UNCORRECTED At Macquarie Room, Parliament House, Sydney, on Monday 31 May 2021 The Committee met at 9:15. PRESENT Ms Cate Faehrmann (Chair) The Hon. Mark Buttigieg The Hon. Catherine Cusack The Hon. Ben Franklin The Hon. Shayne Mallard The Hon. Mark Pearson (Deputy Chair) The Hon. Penny Sharpe Monday, 31 May 2021 Legislative Council Page 1 UNCORRECTED The CHAIR: Welcome to the first hearing of the Portfolio Committee No. 7 – Planning and Environment inquiry into the Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Amendment (Plastics Reduction) Bill 2021. This inquiry will hear stakeholder views on this bill, which aims to phase out single-use plastics and other plastic products that are harmful to the environment and proposes to set targets for plastic reduction with a view to eliminating plastic pollution. Before I commence, I acknowledge the Gadigal people, who are the traditional custodians of this land. I also pay respect to the Elders past, present and emerging of the Eora nation and extend that respect to other First Nations people present. Today we will be hearing from a number of stakeholders, including environment and community groups, local government, disability advocates, bioplastic manufacturers and the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation. Though we will have many witnesses with us in person, some will be appearing via videoconference. I thank everyone for making the time to give evidence to this important inquiry. Before we commence I will make some brief comments about the procedures for today's hearing. Today's hearing is being broadcast live via the Parliament's website. A transcript of today's hearing will be placed on the Committee's website when it becomes available. In accordance with the broadcast guidelines, I remind media representatives that they must take responsibility for what they publish about the Committee's proceedings. While parliamentary privilege applies to witnesses giving evidence throughout this inquiry, it does not apply to what witnesses may say outside of their evidence at this hearing. I therefore urge witnesses to be careful about comments they may make to the media or to others after they complete their evidence. Committee hearings are not intended to provide a forum for people to make adverse reflections about others under the protection of parliamentary privilege. In that regard it is important that witnesses focus on the issues raised by the inquiry's terms of reference and avoid naming individuals unnecessarily. All witnesses have a right to procedural fairness according to the procedural fairness resolution adopted by the House in 2018. If witnesses are unable to answer a question today and want more time to respond, they can take a question on notice. Written answers to questions on notice are to be provided within 21 days. If witnesses wish to hand up documents, they should do so through the Committee's staff. In regard to the audibility for today's hearing I remind both Committee members and witnesses to speak into the microphones. As we have a number of witnesses in person and via videoconference, it will be helpful to identify who questions are directed to and who is speaking. Those with hearing difficulties who are present in the room today, please note that the room is fitted with induction loops compatible with hearing aid systems that have telecoil receivers. Finally I ask that everyone turn mobile phones to silent for the duration of the hearing. PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE NO. 7 - PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENT UNCORRECTED Monday, 31 May 2021 Legislative Council Page 2 UNCORRECTED JEFF ANGEL, Director, Boomerang Alliance, affirmed and examined TOBY HUTCHEON, Campaign Manager, Boomerang Alliance, before the Committee via videoconference, affirmed and examined The CHAIR: Thank you very much. Would either or both of you like to start by making a short statement? Mr Angel? Mr ANGEL: Yes, I would like to make a few brief comments. This inquiry is particularly important, firstly because of the subject matter, the unrelenting accumulation of plastic in the environment, oceans, land, air, terrestrial waterways, which is causing severe damage to marine life and other food chains connected to that life and, potentially, serious implications for human health. The second reason this inquiry is important is that New South Wales has failed to act on this problem in any semblance of a comprehensive manner. In fact, only the Northern Territory and Tasmania, along with New South Wales, have an absence of plastic pollution policies. That is quite embarrassing for this State, which has had a previous good record on environmental protection and needs to move swiftly on this very important problem. Our submission has two key themes. The first is that we need to take action on single-use plastics now. I will explain which ones, as are in our submission. Secondly, we need to address other major sources of plastic pollution and wastage to get cracking on. Certainly, the proposed commission could work on that. You might ask, "Why should the State act?" The first answer is that national harmonisation has not occurred and the horse has bolted. A number of States—South Australia, the ACT and Queensland in particular—have already passed legislation, and Western Australia and Victoria have announced concrete policies to act. In fact, even the National Plastics Plan, released by the Federal Government a little while ago, acknowledged that different States have taken action and that national plan simply adds additional items to the proposed ban list. We certainly encourage New South Wales to be ambitious beyond the recent meeting of environment Ministers' list—quite a short list—when in fact other States have included other sources of single-uses that are causing serious litter and pollution. We reject the option of voluntary arrangements. In fact, they have been a failure over many decades, particularly through the Australian Packaging Covenant. We do have national waste and national plastic goals. We certainly believe that, given the short time frame—that is 2025—in order to meet those goals, nothing but mandatory arrangements will work. Finally, just as a point of what we regard as recycling, we do not regard waste to energy as an acceptable form of recycling. In fact, it is simply just one other way of disposing of the plastic, and it never gets recycled again in the circular economy. I do not know whether Mr Hutcheon may have a few things to say. Mr HUTCHEON: It is okay, Mr Angel. No, I think that is pretty much a round-up of what we have to say. The CHAIR: Thank you. This is an inquiry focused on a particular bill—the bill for phasing out single-use plastics. I think your submission suggests that you support the bill but there could be, potentially, a few improvements made. Could you speak to those first, please? Mr ANGEL: The first major improvement is in regard to the list of single-use plastic items that the bill seeks to progressively remove from the marketplace. When you go through the list, you find that the other States have already banned some of those items. We have marked those with an asterisk in our submission. We do not really see much purpose, given that the other States have already done their investigations and regulatory impact statements, for New South Wales or the plastic commission to repeat that process. The legislation should be amended to simply say that those items we have marked with an asterisk should be banned from six months of the Act going through Parliament. The other items, there may be more to discuss, and the plastic commission can investigate those. But we do not see why the plastic commission or, in fact, other government processes should use their resources and time in order to look at things that have already been fully investigated and banned in other States. The CHAIR: Mr Hutcheon, do you have anything to add? No. I think you will indicate if you do. I just wanted to get your view so we can explore the Australian Packaging Covenant a little further. We will have some industry reps and, indeed, the Australian Packaging Covenant people later today or tomorrow, who will talk about the progress made with this covenant. But it is voluntary. I understand that all of the companies that sign on to this do so voluntarily. Do you think that there has been a barrier here? Some companies obviously will not sign it. Is that correct? Do you think it is strong enough? What are the problems with the voluntary system? PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE NO. 7 - PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENT UNCORRECTED Monday, 31 May 2021 Legislative Council Page 3 UNCORRECTED Mr ANGEL: The Australian Packaging Covenant is a bit of a hybrid. Certainly, the packaging covenant is essentially a voluntary instrument. It is underlain by the National Environment Protection Measures [NEPMs] for used packaging materials, which, in theory, has some enforceability. But, as the recent Federal investigation into the covenant and the NEPM found, there has never been any compliance action by the States. Arguably, it is probably very complicated to take compliance action because the NEPM is expressed in really broad terms and it is really difficult to delve down into a single company's behaviour. The packaging covenant itself has resisted enforceability and they have a very clear ideological position against being regulated. When you look at the range of goals that they have, particularly for packaging, one is that 100 per cent by 2025 needs to be recyclable or compostable. That really does not mean anything. That is just an indication of potentiality.