Page 1225 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 March 2013
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MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (11.39): The opposition will not be supporting the motion today. Let us make it quite clear: unlike ACT Labor and the Greens, the cost of living is a great concern to the opposition. The ACIL Tasman report on the cost of container deposit schemes states that the cost of a beverage CDS on the average household shopping basket is estimated to range from $137 to $437 per household per year depending on their household income. That is for New South Wales, and gross incomes are clearly much larger in the ACT so you would expect, therefore, the cost to be much higher to the people of the ACT.
We favour local initiatives over global schemes. We favour community engagement over political activism. We favour practical solutions over expensive, purpose-driven government campaigns. Much of what Mr Rattenbury seeks to achieve or claims will be achieved already exists in the ACT. The government has a report from 2002 that says a container deposit scheme in the ACT may harm the recycling effort and come at much greater cost to the community. That does not seem like a practical or appropriate outcome for the people of the ACT, and yet here we have yet another standard Greens motion all dressed up in reasonableness just to further Mr Rattenbury’s activism. After all, who was arrested outside the court in the Northern Territory when this case was handed down? A couple of Greenpeace activists. What did they say? “Well, we’ll continue to do it.” They will campaign vigorously against it. Greenpeace’s comments were, “It is up to the other states now to stand up to Coke’s bullying”—a thinly veiled attack on a large corporate. We have heard this scenario from the Greens before, and now like the good Greenpeace soldier that Mr Rattenbury is, he is standing up to take up the Greenpeace cause. Yes, it is another Greenpeace motion in the ACT Assembly.
A little more than two weeks ago the Federal Court found that the Northern Territory’s cash for containers scheme is in breach of the commonwealth Mutual Recognition Act 1992. We understand from advice from Mr Rattenbury’s office that much of what is motivating this was sparked by a motion moved by Senator Whish-Wilson in the Senate on 13 March this year. It is worth noting that although that motion received tripartisan support, Labor amended the Greens’ Senate motion removing a call for immediate action to pursue urgent legislation to grant the Northern Territory an exemption, preferring instead to deal with the matter through the COAG process, a process which is underway already. The process is not fast enough and it is not going far enough to please the former Greenpeace warrior, so we will have a motion here that pushes further than is required.
The amended motion in the Senate called on all Australian governments to expedite consideration of any application made by the Northern Territory government for an exemption under the Mutual Recognition Act 1992 to support the continuation of the Northern Territory container deposit scheme, which, of course, is paragraph (2) of Mr Rattenbury’s motion. It is interesting to note that, with the exception of paragraph (3), Mr Rattenbury’s motion is a wholesale cut and paste of the amended Senate motion.
In this regard, one could argue that calls on all Australian governments to work together is a valid motion federally. However, in the Assembly, where we deal with
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