Page 3401 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 22 August 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
recovery. It includes targets of 90 per cent of waste being diverted from landfill by 2025, but we know that that figure has plateaued at around 70 per cent for the past decade.
During estimates this year, I asked the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment about this plateau. I asked if she could give a brief update on the current recovery rates, on how we are tracking, and on how she thought that the ACT could meet that 90 per cent by 2025 target. I asked because there had been no studies, and there was only a peripheral mention of it in the 2015 State of the environment report. She suggested that the question was complex and took it on notice. I would like to be able to provide her answer now to the Assembly and to my colleagues here, but all she said, in addition to outlining the commission’s legal obligations, was that waste would be one of the many environmental issues reported on in the 2019 ACT state of the environment report. If I were cynical, Madam Assistant Speaker, I would suggest that she is unable to answer because the government clearly just does not know.
Perhaps the commissioner does not want anything from the 2019 report made public before the whole report is ready to go, and I understand why she would not want her comments to be taken out of context. In any event, we do not know whether or how we will meet those targets, and simply publishing the data in various reports will not make it happen.
If we are struggling to report on how we are to get closer to a waste reduction level and it has not moved for over a decade, I doubt that we are going to get much joy asking the government to investigate further opportunities to reduce the use of single-use plastic throughout the ACT so that less waste is generated. It is a noble sentiment, but noble sentiments, glossy brochures and percentages plucked out of the air will not get us there.
Ms Orr has already started her own campaign, I see. I thank her for updating the Assembly on her efforts to get the Chief Minister to use reusable coffee cups, and congratulate her on her success. If she wants another challenge, I would ask that perhaps she should speak to Ms Fitzharris to ask why so much thin sheet plastic is used along the light rail construction corridor. I assume it is not the soft plastic that she spoke about earlier. There is no doubt that it is going to be directed to landfill, and the volume and frequency of its use will certainly add waste to wherever it is sent.
Yes, the ACT must manage its waste better. Yes, we need to protect our waterways. And yes, we need to reduce what goes into landfill. More importantly, we must be able to report accurately and frequently on how we are progressing on those targets.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (11.28): I am in the somewhat rare situation of agreeing with virtually everything that all the speakers have spoken about so far. It is really good that this Assembly recognises that we have a plastic problem. Australia, I understand, is responsible for over 13,000 tonnes of plastic litter each year. I want to say the word “litter” again. I am not talking about plastic waste as a whole; I am talking about the bits that are just rubbish, waste and litter, lying around.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video