Senator BELL(4.27 p.m.) —We did deal with this legislation last year and the Democrats will be dealing with it in much the same way this year with some additional amendments. I must say that I, too, am entertained to see a change in the attitude of the previous opposition with regard to the urgency of this matter, but I agree that this is an important piece of legislation at the moment.

Australia is and remains an international disgrace because it is not meeting its obligations under the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. I would remind the Senate that the Basel convention was adopted in 1989 and Australia joined in early 1992. While there are over 60 signatories to the convention at the moment, there are some notable exceptions, for example, the United States.

The convention has seen increasingly severe restrictions agreed to internationally to limit the trade in toxic wastes and, in particular, to try to prevent countries of the north, or the developed world, from dumping hazardous wastes on countries of the south, or the less developed world.

In 1993 another convention banned the dumping of industrial and nuclear waste at sea. The International Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter—which is known as the London dumping convention—means that waste dumped at sea now has to be disposed of on land, meaning that poisons will be released onto the soil and into the land environment unless that waste is treated.

I am reminded particularly of the situation with jarosite dumping which continues to this day in Tasmania. I think that is due to a lack of zealous application and imagination by the previous government rather than practical possibilities, because I know that it is possible to do one of two things: either reorganise the method of production of zinc in Tasmania, because it is possible to produce zinc by other processes than the process which requires jarosite; or arrange for its disposal or at least storage on land.

We could comply with the London dumping convention. We have chosen not to. For that we continue in disgrace, thumbing our noses at the requirements of the convention. That is the sort of thing that we continue to follow in our comfortable, First World, developed lifestyles. We retain the luxury of being allowed to protect parts of our environment and ignore other parts and choose to subscribe to conventions or choose not to. We have this luxury. We follow through the nimby type of approach at a national level because we are subjected to the fact that nobody in their right mind wants to have a cesspit or a toxic waste incinerator in their neighbourhood. It is easy for us to follow that at a national level. It becomes easier and cheaper for us to export the waste and to place it out of sight, out of mind.

As stricter regulations have been applied to waste disposal, so the costs have risen and so the quantities and types of hazardous waste have risen. In the United States alone, the amount of hazardous wastes rose from nine million tonnes a year in the early 1970s to 240 million tonnes in 1990. We are still a society which creates exactly what we want and damn the consequences. We worry about them afterwards. In some cases we choose to allow other people to worry about it.

The Democrats maintain the concept that the focus must remain on waste prevention and minimisation, to cut down on the amount and the types of services required to deal with the waste. We do not accept that it is not possible to continue in the way that we are at the moment, where we continue to create greater and greater amounts of waste and to seek to make somebody else responsible. Operators and creators of waste who come to us say that the irresponsible operators get the subsidies to dump cheaply, which makes it unfair and expensive for those good operators who want to meet their community responsibilities. These trends have meant increasing pressure to export the waste. I will quote the coordinator of Greenpeace International's toxic trade prevention project, Mr Jim Pucket, who says that toxic waste, if left to the free market, will follow a path of least resistance. I say: what would you expect? With the decisions of economic rationalists being driven by market demands, of course that is what will happen.

Hazardous waste by-products go to the countries which are most vulnerable and which have the least economic ability to resist them. Cash in return for dumping some slime in a back paddock is hard to refuse. One example is the government of Guinea Bissau, who took over 15 million tonnes of toxic waste for the payment of $600 million. They said they needed the money and that is no doubt the case, and who would refuse a deal that was four times the gross national product of the country?

Since 1989—and remember that that is when the Basel Convention started—there have been over 500 attempts to export 200 million tonnes of waste from the 24 member countries of the OECD to 122 non-member countries of the OECD. The preferred countries to dump in are changing from Africa, the Pacific and Latin America. The shift is to Eastern and Central Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States and Asia. In the negotiations to the Basel Convention the majority of countries wanted to ban trafficking in hazardous waste altogether. However, the proposal for a worldwide ban was vetoed, not surprisingly and very sadly, by the OECD countries which had the most to lose from such a ban.

As I heard Senator Margetts mention, one of the most notable exports has been lead acid batteries under the guise of recycling, sounding very friendly by that description. The problems associated with this were first brought to light when workers in less developed countries were having problems with the effects of what was supposed to be recycling plants for lead acid batteries. It was highlighted that workers were not wearing safe clothing; they were getting acid burns and even becoming blind from unsafe work practices.

In 1994 Australia was the main exporter of lead acid batteries to Indonesia. In 1992, in just one year, we exported over 11,000 tonnes of lead acid batteries compared with the United Kingdom's 700 tonnes in 1993. When a particular plant started near Jakarta, the villagers thought that it was for processing wood. However, it burned 60,000 tonnes of lead acid batteries a year, sending fumes and ash into the neighbouring rural area. The waste, which is a mixture of lead and plastic, is dumped outside the factory and is taken home by local people who melt it in woks in their backyards to extract the lead, which they then sell.

We would know, but unfortunately they would not know, in advance and we would expect the result. The result is that villagers have very high blood lead levels and are coughing blood. We would have predicted that but we, in our comfort, export to their ignorance and exploit these people, calling it recycling and feeling good about it. This is the way that we are dealing with our waste. Everyone in this parliament—because remember, we are making the laws that allow this—is responsible for such decisions.

The Democrats hope that this legislation will prevent these types of trade but we know that there are plenty of people, the sorts of shonks and brokers whom we would find in any place, who would like to get permits to take the waste off the conscience of the Australian government and then on-sell it. We hope that this will not happen. We will be watching carefully and listening to the aid groups who have been part of the discussions and the consultations to see what is happening to the waste that is exported under this amended act.

I am aware that the former government went through a two-year consultancy process with conservation and community groups and with industry. I think that process at least should be acknowledged as making an effort to follow in the right direction. Nevertheless, we still have some amendments to this legislation. The first two are to limit some rather wide-ranging powers of the minister and the last is to ensure that economic considerations are not placed ahead of safety because, as in the example I used, it is cheaper to export batteries to Indonesia but unconscionable and certainly not safe. It certainly requires further considerations other than economic ones. The constant theme of my argument in this whole area of legislation is that if we rely on the economic paradigm to determine what is appropriate behaviour then we will not necessarily end up in a socially equitable and just situation.

The Democrats will have the opportunity to move amendments. We will not accept replacing the word `safety' with the word `effici ently', because that would put at the highest level of decision making a judgment about the economic value of following certain actions. I will detail further amendments in the committee stage.