Page 2119 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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element of this term’s parliamentary agreement. It fully delivers on our 2016 election commitment to grow the network of walk-in centres across Canberra to five: across Gungahlin, Weston Creek, Belconnen, Tuggeranong and now Dickson. Of course, by delivering more great community healthcare facilities through the recent budget, we are growing the services and infrastructure Canberrans will need for better health and wellbeing in the years to come.
Transport Canberra and City Services—logistical challenges
MR MILLIGAN: My question is to the Minister for City Services. Minister, in January this year the Canberra Times reported that up to 250 tonnes of potentially recyclable material was dumped into landfill. To quote the directorate, this occurred as a result of “logistical challenges”. Minister, why has the directorate suffered from logistical challenges?
MR STEEL: The reason is that we have a national waste crisis at the moment as a result of the China sword policy, which has seen significant restrictions placed on waste being exported from overseas. That has affected markets for waste resources nationally. As a result of that, the MRF in particular has also been seeing very significant effects here in the ACT.
That did not impact us until the crunch period during December-January this year. This is a particularly busy period, the holiday period, for the MRF. As a result there was a significant amount of material on site. The government’s WorkSafe went in and closed the facility for a few days. We then stockpiled material at the Mugga Lane landfill. Unfortunately, it got to a point where we could not stockpile that material any further, and one day’s worth of recycling material had to be put into landfill. Importantly, that was not material from the container deposit scheme. The container deposit scheme has been working to make sure that we can better access the markets domestically by providing a waste stream that is freer from contamination.
As a result of that, we have been working with the MRF on a regular basis to make sure that they address safety issues. They now have a full-time safety officer employed on the site. We have been working with a logistics expert to deal with the material on site as well. We have just announced in the budget that we will be undertaking a review into the future needs of the materials recovery facility.
MR MILLIGAN: Minister, what impact have these logistical challenges had on the environment, and will you apologise to the Canberra community for allowing this to happen?
MR STEEL: This is a MRF operated by a third party. We continue to work with them to make sure that they responsibly manage the waste resources that go to the MRF. We will continue to do that to make sure we reach our target of reducing the amount of waste going to landfill by 90 per cent by 2025. This is an important piece of work because we want to build a circular economy, using these waste resources as many times as possible in the economy and creating jobs along the way.
This stands in stark contrast to the approach of those opposite, who have opposed the
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