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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 4757 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

and general merchandising. Litter studies indicate that plastic bags are generally in the top 20 litter items and comprise 2 per cent of the rubbish collected at sites during events like Clean Up Australia Day and Keep Australia Beautiful campaigns.

Mr Speaker, 2 per cent may not sound like a significant figure but the unsightliness of plastic bags, along with the effect that they have on the environment, in particular waterways, and the fact that they take somewhere between 20 to 1,000 years to break down in the environment, have forced us to look at new ways to recycle and reduce the number of plastic bags used in this country and, indeed, Canberra each year.

Mr Speaker, there are many steps that we can take to reduce the use of plastic bags in the territory, and this opposition is calling on the government to take some of those steps today. Reducing plastic bag use is not an easy task, nor can it be solved with only one solution. In recent times we have heard many ideas bandied around to reduce plastic bag use: a plastic bag levy, degradable plastic bags, more education and more awareness. Which solution is the right one? The short answer is that all of these proposals put together will provide us with the solution. One strategy may not necessarily suit all circumstances. We need to implement a range of options that cover a range of consumer needs and trends.

The National Plastic Bags Working Group set up by the federal government to inquire further into reducing plastic bag consumption found that there were four main concerns when it came to plastic bag use and disposal: consumer behaviour that results in littering and associated indiscriminate waste disposal; resource efficiency issues; the plastic recyclability issues relating to littering and resource use; and social issues.

The group identified a range of management options to address the behaviour of inadvertent and intentional littering. These were: in the long term, an investigation of current and future waste and landfill management practices; the development of specific, nationally consistent guidelines to assist landfill operators to minimise off-site litter; and, in the short term, active support be given to current consumer awareness and anti-litter campaigns.

Federal, state and territory ministers for environment have met on a number of occasions to discuss the next step. The most recent meeting saw ministers agree to developing a mandatory code to reduce the use of plastic bags. Media reports following this meeting reported that South Australia supported a plastic bag ban while Victoria favoured charging customers a levy at supermarkets for the use of plastic bags. We do not know what the ACT advocated because the Chief Minister did not reveal our government's preference. I hope he will do so today.

In the territory there has been no funding, no advertising and no talk from those opposite about how the ACT will meet its end of the bargain in the "aspirational goal"to reduce plastic bag litter by 75 per cent by next year. If the government was serious about this issue it would have ensured that funds were available in the 2003-04 budget for the process. They were not. The problem is that this government does not seem to have solutions and it is not willing to implement short-term strategies or any solutions put forward by anyone else, even though it itself is bereft of ideas.

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