Page 2368 - Week 07 - Thursday, 4 August 2016
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That was from the then Minister for Urban Services, Tony De Domenico, back in 1996. So this has a long history in the ACT.
We have moved over time from a vision of no waste to a vision of waste minimisation to now waste management rather than waste minimisation. The goal of the ACT waste management strategy 2011-2025 is:
… to ensure that the ACT leads innovation to achieve full resource recovery and a carbon neutral waste sector.
This goal is supported by four key outcomes and identifies 29 strategies that will enable the achievement of the outcomes. The objectives are:
Outcome 1: less waste generated
Outcome 2: full resource recovery
Outcome 3: a clean environment
Outcome 4: a carbon neutral waste sector.
This is something that has been on the minds of governments for many years in the ACT. And it is something that we are proud to support today.
The ACT Auditor-General released a performance audit report, Management of recycling estates and e-waste, in June 2012. In that report the Auditor-General made a number of recommendations. As the minister said when presenting the bill, the Auditor-General’s report found there was room for improvement. Some recommendations from the Auditor-General’s report include that the former TAMS Directorate “should enhance its management of the Hume Resource Recovery Estate”, which was recommendation 1, and listed some things that needed to be done to achieve this, including developing a risk management plan for the estate and that TAMS should appoint an authorised person to foster the development of a waste regulation that controls the storage of waste, in particular stockpiling of recycling products, and work out whether the Environment Protection Authority or TAMS should be the ACT’s waste regulator, which was recommendation 5. This bill puts those recommendations into place. However, it has taken four years since those recommendations were made by the Auditor-General in the performance audit.
I have already spoken briefly about some of the enforcement provisions that the bill introduces. The bill gives the waste manager the power to require a registered waste transporter who meets certain criteria, including having been convicted of an offence under the act, to have an approved GPS device installed in a vehicle that the registered waste transporter uses to transport waste—clause 40. The bill makes it an offence in certain circumstances for a registered waste transporter to transport waste in a vehicle that does not have an approved GPS device installed. I am unsure at this time whether the registered waste transporter bears the cost of complying with the direction to install an approved GPS device, and I hope that the minister may be able to provide more clarity on that question.
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