Page 2322 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 August 2007
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the vision of the last Liberal government. Minister Tony De Domenico, who laid down the vision for the 2010 no waste strategy, said:
By 2010 it is envisaged that waste will have been eliminated by a community that:
• has encouraged the producers of goods to take responsibility for the form in which their products are sold to ensure that waste is not generated with the initial production, during use or at the end of the product’s life;
• has created an environment for developing innovative solutions to avoid generating waste;
• only buys what it needs. Whether they be building materials or groceries, waste is avoided by efficient buying and production practices;
• has created cost-effective methods for recovering resources so that materials can either be re-used or reprocessed into valuable products;
• has created industries dealing in unwanted materials;
• has extended the opportunities for resource recovery to the Canberra region; and
• takes pride in its achievements in eliminating waste and includes environmental education as a key element in achieving the vision.
I have not quite discovered whether the government stuck to that vision or whether a no net waste increase to landfill by 2010 position was arrived at. Nevertheless, the goal of achieving no waste by 2010, hopefully, a gross no waste landfill by 2010, was an admirable objective. I am pleased that the Greens want to hurry us all along in that direction.
I have a problem with Dr Foskey’s motion in that the timeframe is unrealistic. It is not that Dr Foskey has not done a proper time and space appreciation; it is just that the government has brought us to a position where it is physically impossible, given the fact that it dropped the ball over the last six years, to reach a stage where we have no waste and we eradicate landfill by 2010. That is simply not possible. So that target date must be amended. I ask Dr Foskey to establish whether we can include a more realistic deadline to achieve that objective.
The 2010 strategy will not work. Opposition members will have a lot more to say about this when we table our policy on waste management in the next six months or so. We will lay down what we believe to be a realistic target—a target that has to be readjusted because the government dropped the ball. A no landfill strategy and a no waste strategy are simply not possible now because of this government’s failure to achieve certain targets.
The government must meet new environmental standards by significantly reducing our reliance on the waste management and landfill strategy. We need to develop a more diversified waste recycling and rubbish collection system. We are at one with the Greens on that. It does not involve just providing residents with green waste bins
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