Page 1717 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 7 June 2016
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To manage waste activity in a way that encourages recycling and recovery, while discouraging the sending of waste to landfill, we must have an understanding of where waste is being generated and where it is going. Regulations will outline a simple, easy process for providing waste activity reports. The content of reports may become more sophisticated over time as technology and business practices allow. In the short term, however, the burden of this requirement will be kept to a minimum. This has all been worked through in consultation with businesses and the community.
It is proposed that, initially, transporters will be required to report only the date of waste collection, the collection customer and place, the broad type and quantity—that is, weight, volume or skip size—of the waste collected, and the date and place of delivery. This allows a basic, light touch approach so that valuable waste activity data can be obtained and analysed with a low impact on industry and the community.
The bill provides for enforceable codes of practice about any waste activity, which can include waste generation. For example, there may be a code about retail packaging or transporting clinical waste. There will be stronger enforcement and offence provisions, reinforcing the intention of this legislation to encourage appropriate activity while discouraging activities such as illegal dumping and excessive stockpiling of waste.
As I said, the bill includes the light touch enforcement option of enforceable undertakings, which will allow a waste operator to offer to take action to address an alleged breach of the act or a licence as an alternative to prosecution. There are some activities or people who should be excluded from the operation of particular aspects of the new legislation. The bill needs to provide this flexibility in a rapidly changing policy and operational environment. For example, the transportation of soils will be temporarily exempted from reporting requirements while more is learned about this area of activity.
The bill includes standard provisions for authorised officers to enter and search premises for investigative and enforcement purposes. While I note that the vast majority of waste operators are corporate entities, care will be taken to ensure that privacy and commercial confidentiality are protected, as they are now.
I must stress that this bill is designed to initially establish a process for formally recognising operators of facilities and commercial transporters and for generating a reliable database for waste activity.
Over time, waste charges will increasingly be aimed at sending effective price signals to industry and the community, to encourage the diversion of waste away from landfill and into recycling and recovery. This will be good for our environment and reduce our waste. I must also stress that this legislation is aimed primarily at commercial activity. The impact of the bill on everyday domestic waste collections will be negligible.
I wish to clarify a few other aspects of this bill: it deliberately targets regulation of the collection and treatment of waste, rather than waste generation, because those are the
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