Page 5810 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Australian firms are coming up with but are not yet at the stage where they are viable and, indeed, may never be viable now if bags like this are not allowed to be used.
The problem here is that we are making a law today, and a very serious law, that has implications. And one of those implications is the level of fines in this bill—$27,500 for giving somebody a shopping bag. If that is the level of fine, if that is the level we have attached to this, if that is what the minister and those who will support it, his Green colleagues in their coalition, believe is an appropriate fine, then I look forward to the minister going back through all of our legislation and re-jigging the fines for some of the other crimes.
What was that example? This is a fine greater than taking a child to a brothel. Taking a child to a brothel is a crime in the ACT. It has a lesser penalty than giving somebody a shopping bag. Where is the reality check in this place when the ACT Labor Party, as always, assisted by the ACT Greens—you can always rely on the Greens to back up whatever the Labor Party says—believe that it is a greater offence to give somebody a shopping bag than it is to take a child to a brothel? Wake up to yourselves!
One of two things will happen here. The minister will jump up at the end of this and say, “Yes, you are right; we will amend that because you are right; the perspective is wrong and the ratio is wrong,” or he will say, “We will now go back and recalibrate every other crime in the ACT to match the shopping bag standard. This is the new standard, the shopping bag standard, and $27,500 is one of the potential fines. We will now recalibrate.” This is madness. This is insanity.
We have already got a community that do their bit. They do it in so many ways. Those on the other side always talk about equity and caring for the less well-off. The less well-off will now, as will those of us who are well-off, have to go and purchase heavy duty bags and not use bin liners at all or they will have to purchase, at greater cost, because they will not be given potential bin liners, these things, putting another cost on them. Maybe we will have a subsidy system like we have for those who cannot afford electricity and gas. We will have a bin liner subsidy as well because what we are doing is putting a lot of cost to this.
I had a friend send me an email this morning when he heard about this. He said, “Fantastic. I am going to go out and buy shares in Glad. Gladbags will be very pleased with this legislation, because they will make a motza out of the ACT and other jurisdictions as we shut down the ability to give away a free bag when we are shopping.” He is very pleased. He is going to go out and buy shares immediately, because he can see the potential of this. He is probably a very wise man in that regard.
Madam Deputy Speaker, behind you are the words “For the Queen, the law and the people”. I ask: what is in this for the people? You have already got a jurisdiction of individuals who, we know, are committed. Most of them do not believe that this is a necessary step. Have we listened to the people in this regard? You have already got a jurisdiction that, through many efforts, has reduced their waste—for example, through their recycling of newspaper.
I remember in the late 1990s when I was the minister for the environment, a rumour got out somehow that we were going to stop recycling paper because we had
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video