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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1761 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

There are all sorts of potential creative solutions to this. We know that there are cafes and restaurants that use washable crockery and cutlery now. I was discussing the bus motion as Mr Moore was speaking, and I honestly did not hear him probably, but he seemed to be referring to some fears about health. If he is suggesting that this is somehow going to have a negative impact on safe food and providing food in containers, we know that people are reusing crockery now-they do that.

One of the real problems is that, in any voluntary scheme, when you have people who actually understand the problems of environmental waste doing the right thing, they are disadvantaged in the market by people who are not doing the right thing. That is why, with the national approach now to packaging and so on, the industry itself has acknowledged that they like a voluntary scheme, but if people will not do it, they have to be forced in a more onerous way to do it. They know that the people who are irresponsible will have an advantage in the market because it will be cheaper for them-although, if you did a cradle-to-grave analysis of the cost to our society of that cheap production, you would see that we are all paying now and in the long run for the so-called efficiency gained by people at the expense of the environment.

It is clear that I am not going to be getting support for this. I think I have put most of the points fairly clearly in my tabling statement, so I will not take up more of the Assembly's time. I will just say that the Greens will continue to push these sorts of initiatives in this Assembly as they will in other parliaments around Australia and around the world because we know it is a very important thing to do.

Question put:

The Assembly voted-

	 Ayes 2  		Noes 13

 Mr Rugendyke    		Mr Berry  	Mr Moore
 Ms Tucker    			Mrs Burke  	Mr Osborne
     				Mr Corbell  	Mr Quinlan
     				Mr Cornwell  	Mr Smyth
     				Mr Hargreaves  	Mr Stanhope
     				Mr Hird  	Mr Stefaniak
     				Mr Kaine  

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