SUBJECTS: RECYCLING WEEK; RECYCLING MATTRESSES, TYRES AND MEDICAL WASTE; CLIMATE CHANGE FUNDING FOR DEVELOPING NATIONS; HIGHER TARGETS ON CLIMATE CHANGE; INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS LEGISLATION; SPORTS RORTS.
DAVID SMITH, MEMBER FOR BEAN: My name is David Smith, I’m the Federal Member for Bean. It’s great to have you here with me in the recycling hub of Canberra and to be with my colleagues Alicia Payne, Andrew Leigh and Tanya Plibersek, the Minister for Environment and Water. It’s great to be here at Soft Landing with Janelle and Kylie who are doing extraordinary work so I might hand over to Janelle and Kylie to tell us a little more about the great work that goes on here.
KYLIE ROBERTS-FROST, ACT MANAGER SOFT LANDING: I’d just like to say thank you to our representatives for being here this morning. This is really exciting for Soft Landing. The kind of focus and impacts that this kind of involvement in recycling and the work we’re doing. Social enterprise has such an impact on community and it really changes the conversation on how we can help communities do better in the future.
JANELLE WALLACE, AUSTRALIAN BEDDING STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL: It’s so great to be here with a minister interested in recycling and this sort of business. We’re thrilled that she is interested in this work to get everybody in the industry to solve this problem and find solutions.
ANDREW LEIGH, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR COMPETITION, CHARITIES AND TREASURY: Thanks very much Janelle and Kylie for having us here. You’ve got your full ACT House Federal team, Alicia, Dave and I are here because this is the biggest mattress recycling in the ACT. As the Assistant Minister for Charities, I am enormously excited by the fact that Soft Landing puts half of its revenue to its wages. And that’s focused on employing people who otherwise might not otherwise have a way into the labour market. Indigenous Australians, people with disabilities and people who have been newly released from correctional facilities. The social purpose side of this means that for every 35 mattresses a day that are recycled there is one additional job that is created for somebody that may not otherwise have employment. This is a terrific social enterprise and I commend the work that Kylie and the team have been doing to grow the enterprise. I’ll hand over now to Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Thanks so much, Andrew. It is wonderful to be here today during Recycling Week to talk about some of the recycling challenges and opportunities we face in Australia. Australians, sadly, aren’t doing as well as we might like on recycling. Take plastics, for example. At the moment, we’re only recycling about 12.4 per cent of the plastic we use. That’s a real problem, and it sets us apart from other developed economies. In fact, we’re one of the biggest users of raw materials of any country. We’re doing much less recycling and reuse of materials than comparable economies.
Now, that’s not great for the environment. It means we’re producing a lot more landfill than we should; it means we’re using a lot more raw materials than we should, so it’s not good for the environment. It’s also not good for the economy. We know that diverting rubbish from landfill creates three times as many jobs as dumping that rubbish. So, fantastic social enterprises like this show us the way.
Today, I’m announcing that I’ll be adding three new product types to the Minister’s Products Stewardship List. Now being on this list means that industries are on notice that if they don’t lift their game, I will be regulating to improve the lifecycle of the products that they’re responsible for. Today, I’m announcing that mattresses, medical waste, and tyres will go onto the Ministers Product Stewardship List.
We see fantastic examples of social enterprises, businesses, doing the right thing with recycling. But what we know, is that in each of these areas while some importers and manufacturers are doing a really good job, others are free riding on that good work and that’s just not fair.
Taking mattresses for example, what we need to look at is the design of the mattresses, the materials that are going into it, the transport, the plans for how that mattress at the end of its life will actually be broken apart into component parts and recycled. Here at Soft Landing we see the steel going back to BlueScope to be reused as steel. We see some of the wood being remade into the beds and the rest of it being chipped, for example, for mulch. We see the foam being broken down and used for carpet underlay. We can see the value that’s achieved from recycling and reusing these products. But even from the beginning of the design, some types of mattresses are using products that are much harder to recycle. So, getting that whole lifecycle of products so that they can be more easily recycled and reused, that’s really important.
Medical waste is another great example. We know that there’s been mountains of medical waste produced during COVID, and some of that has already started to make its way into recycling. So, high quality PVC – for example, things like syringe caps being remade into gumboots. We see in tyres the breaking down, the crumbing of tyres and then that material being reused, including for things like soft fall in playgrounds.
We are at a really good place in our national discussion about a truly circular economy. Our Government is committing $250 million to upgrading our recycling capabilities. We’ll work in partnership with states and territories and with the private sector but adding these new product types to the Minister’s Products Stewardship List is an important next step.
The other thing I wanted to mention today is that solar panels and electrical products are actually being pushed into the next step, I will be regulating. Because despite the fact that solar panels and electrical goods have been on the Minister’s Product Stewardships List for several years now, we’re not doing well enough in recycling and looking after these products. The next step is regulation, and I’ll be working with the industry to implement that regulation.
Any questions?
JOURNALIST: So what is your message to mattress manufacturers who make [indistinct] like, sort of difficult?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, my message to mattress manufacturers is get your act into gear. The fact that mattresses have been listed on the Minister’s Product Stewardship List now is mattress importers and manufacturers being put on notice. If you don’t get your act in gear, then I’ll take action to regulate.
JOURNALIST: And how much harder will that make their lives if you had to step in and regulate?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, it won’t make the life of people who are doing the right thing harder at all. And that’s the important thing to say here. We’ve got lots of mattress manufacturers and importers who really want to work with Kylie to do the right thing so that we see mattresses picked up at kerbside, dropped off here, diverted from landfill and broken down into their constituent parts and reused and recycled. We want to see a larger proportion of mattresses doing that. And, of course, we also want to design out some of the problematic materials that are, you know, too hard to recycle or reuse.
JOURNALIST: On climate funding, if I could, there’s a story in The Guardian today which indicates that Australia’s only doing 40 per cent of what it should be doing when it comes to climate funding for developing nations. What’s your response to that?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, our Minister for Climate Change, Chris Bowen, will be attending the conference of the parties (COP) in Egypt shortly and he’ll be engaged in those negotiations on behalf of Australia, so I’ll leave any comment to Chris Bowen.
JOURNALIST: But do you think Australia’s doing enough?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I think it’s very plain that Australia has not been doing enough either domestically or internationally until the change of Government. One of the first things that we did was legislate higher targets on climate change. We absolutely need to bring down our carbon dioxide pollution. We’ve legislated to do that. We’ve introduced legislation on ozone depleting gas more recently. We’ve signed the international pledge on methane.
Of course, Australia before the change of Government was really dragging the chain on climate action. And it’s also true that in the past when Labor was in Government we worked very well and very cooperatively with Pacific nations on climate change. A lot of that fell away with the aid cuts to the Pacific. We are absolutely determined to work hand in hand with our Pacific neighbours on the challenges of climate change, and that includes things in my own portfolio, like working with Pacific nations on coral reef restoration, on blue carbon, on mangrove replanting, on nature based solutions, and it includes things that Chris Bowen is doing in areas like climate change, and, of course, the work Pat Conroy and Penny Wong are doing with Pacific neighbours is also really important in addressing climate change.
JOURNALIST: On industrial relations are you confident this revised bill that Tony Burke is presenting today will do enough to satisfy the cross bench?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I think it’s absolutely vital that we negotiate closely and cooperatively with the cross bench. The relationship has been very good. Tony Burke has been working very closely, but Labor is determined to see legislation pass that makes it easier for hardworking Australians who haven’t had a pay rise in close to a decade, to see their real wages rise. Now, we know that the laws as they exist at the moment have not delivered pay increases. We know that Australians are doing it tough. The price of everything is going up. Their wages haven’t kept pace. Labor went to the election promising to get wages moving. That’s what we’re doing.
JOURNALIST: Is, though, the watering down a sort of acknowledgment that it is a fundamentally flawed bill when it comes to modern collective bargaining?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I think making sensible changes in response to discussions with crossbench members of Parliament is the way democracy should work. We’ve said all the way along that we are open to sensible improvements, and that’s exactly how this should work. We want to see hardworking Australians who’ve seen their wages flatlining for years under the Liberals, we want to see them get a pay rise. That’s what this legislation is about.
JOURNALIST: Are you open to more changes?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I’ll let Tony Burke answer questions about negotiations with cross benchers and others.
JOURNALIST: What’s your response to bullying claims within the Administrative Appeals Tribunal?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I don’t know the details of the claims and I believe the Attorney General has asked for additional information, but bullying anywhere, anytime is completely unacceptable.
JOURNALIST: On sports rorts, the Gaetjens Full Report has come out today saying there was a lack of transparency within the provision of those grants. What do you think of that?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Oh, knock me down with a feather! We knew that, and I think it is important to fully and meticulously absorb what this report tells us. But we know that the previous Government used taxpayers’ money as though it was their own piggybank to pork barrel electorates that they were seeking to win. I don’t think anybody would find this surprising and the fact that they had people like Gladys Berejiklian in New South Wales say, “Yeah, everybody does it” tells you a lot about the culture inside the modern Liberal Party.
JOURNALIST: Are you confident that no projects that were announced in the budget, like development of suburban rail link, would come to such a similar conclusion, even though it was recommended?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I will let Catherine King, the Minister for Infrastructure answer detailed questions about the Melbourne rail loop. But I am very confident that this Government understands that taxpayers’ money has to be spent in a way that gives maximum value for every dollar, and that applies across the board. It’s one of the reasons that Katy Gallagher went so closely through the Budget line by line and found over $20 billion of savings could be either saved or redirected into Labor priorities.
We know that the previous Government was hopeless with taxpayers’ money. It was sports rorts, it was car rorts, promising commuter car parks where there was no train station. There was paying $30 million for a block of land valued at $3 million. The previous Government, honestly, were some of the worst economic managers we’ve seen in Australia’s history. Thanks.
