Page 2087 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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was that it was Brendan Smyth, but thank you. It is very disappointing to me that last century, in 1996, the ACT had vastly higher ambition as far as waste is concerned than we do now. I am very pleased that the Liberal Party remember their roots and will be supporting this motion. It is not a stunt; the Greens have been trying to achieve this for even longer than members of the Liberal Party. I am really frustrated that, despite the fact that it has been in all of our parliamentary agreements, we have not had actual, tangible progress on the ground. That is what this motion is about: having actual, tangible progress. Hopefully, this will lead to it.
I am very pleased that Minister Steel’s speech was so positive about it. I appreciate that both Minister Steel and Ms Lawder have brought out lots of very reasonable points about the difficulties and time lines in implementation. Particularly for Minister Steel, it is his role to take the Assembly’s brilliant ideas and turn them into practice. I wish him and his department very well in doing that. Not being a minister, it is not my role to get all of the little bits right. I thank both sides of the Assembly for their support—more fulsome from one side than the other. Generally, what we are saying is what everybody is saying: we need to look at how we deal with waste in the ACT.
First we need to look at less food waste. Number one is less food waste. Use food better. But, given that we will still have food waste, we need to look at that waste as a resource to be used rather than as a problem that goes into our landfill and creates more greenhouse gases. The obvious solution is to compost it. We know how to do it. Other parts of the world are doing it. Other parts of Australia are doing it. People just over the border from us are doing it. So we are calling on the government to accelerate what I assume it was going to do anyway—the waste feasibility study is going entirely in that direction—and make a commitment to doing it, and doing it as soon as possible.
I am also calling on the food businesses of the ACT to come on board. Reduce your food waste as far as possible. Give edible food to organisations like OzHarvest, Communities@Work et cetera. The commercial collectors of waste—because most food businesses are not having their waste collected by the ACT government; they are having it collected commercially—should look at this and realise it is actually a really good, new business opportunity for you. You may be in it already, like Goterra, Able Organic and Global Worming—which I must say is a wonderful name. This is a chance for you to expand your business. If you are looking for a new business opportunity, this could well be an opportunity for you.
This is one of the many areas where the ACT is in a position to lead in terms of a sustainable, circular economy. We are definitely big enough to do it and smart enough to do it, and it is something we should be doing. We have a campaign on a website called compostnotlandfill.org. If you would like a sticker about this, you can go there or call in at my office, because we have a large supply of them. I would not have had quite as large a supply as I do have if I had been as confident as Ms Lawder was about the positive reception for this motion today. I thank the Assembly for what I believe will be their support and I look forward to more compost and less landfill.
Amendment agreed to.
Original question, as amended, resolved in the affirmative.
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