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Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Page: 2815

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (11:40): I indicate at the outset that the Australian Greens will be supporting this amendment. When it was first proposed, or perhaps when some of the arguments were being tested during the committee process, I had some strong concerns about where the coalition was heading. Senator Fisher, I think, raised on a number of occasions the idea that ultimately product stewardship frameworks could be applied to nearly anything at all. Senator Fisher and other coalition MPs at the time were stating that with a sense of horror, as though it would be a terrible thing if many products which are familiar and in everyday use were to be discarded and then find their way into this framework legislation at some stage. I fail to see why that would necessarily be a bad thing.

The coalition, however, argued in their additional comments that the product stewardship criteria be reworked. I will acknowledge that every witness, with the exception of the department, who came in front of the committee said it is very difficult to detect where the government is heading with this. No priorities have been set. We have no idea whether this is intended to cover the field. How do we know that you are going to go after what some described as the low-hanging fruit or whether you are going to tie us up in going through regulatory impact statements and so on for products that are not necessarily at the top of the list for a product stewardship scheme?

So we are convinced that there are grounds for this. We welcome this amend­ment. I acknowledge that we fought for a little while over the term 'significantly'. I think if that ends up being addressed as too harsh a test by the government—and I invite the parliamentary secretary to address this issue specifically—we may end up finding that nothing finds its way into the scheme, if we are not careful. I know that that is not the government's intention. But I also acknowledge the way that some of the witnesses put this; we are in effect taking it on trust that the political will is there to move products into this framework so that we can actually start to reduce waste volumes in a serious way.

We support criteria that capture all of the potential products that might be appropriate for a scheme like this. I understand the opposition's intention is not to needlessly exclude products that we could usefully pull out of landfill or off the side of the road. They need to have clear meaning. I think it was successfully argued by coalition senators that indeed nearly anything at all could have found its way into this framework. That contributed to the unease expressed by people in industry and by non-government organisations that work on improving waste policy—opposite ends of the spectrum. There was no sense at all about where the government was going to take this.

In evidence given to the committee, Mr Jeff Angel from the Total Environment Centre was asked whether ministerial discretion would set appropriate boundaries or whether in fact this framework would end up applying to every substance and every conceivable product. He said:

What in this bill makes it apply to everything? On paper everything; in practice potentially nothing, as I have outlined.

We could set this framework up and, if it were not for the good work that is being done in the e-waste area, I would be very sceptical as to the value of this bill at all. Mr Angel went on to say:

So it will be somewhere in the middle, or somewhere closer to not very many.

That is: not very many product streams are going to find their way into this framework. He continues:

Knowing how government processes work, how government regulatory assessments work, how industry negotiates and how we have had to work on the various committees, in reality it does not apply to everything. Frankly, I think it is the sort of fiction that puts the bill in a completely wrong perspective and light. What legislation makes everything happen unless it says that everything is going to come under it? It is a discretionary exercise and discretion in ministerial and government terms is very bounded.

That is from the point of view of groups like the Total Environment Centre, which are obviously concerned to see the maximum value and the maximum benefit gained. In some contexts, that might mean that a very wide variety of products wind up in this scheme.

The Australian Food and Grocery Council took a slightly different perspective on it during the same hearing, but effectively arrived at the same conclusion. Mr Mahar from the Australian Food and Grocery Council said:

… based on the broad interpretation. While we support that, our concern is that it leaves too much scope opportunity for secondary regulations to be made in relation to a range of products that are not necessarily compatible with product stewardship schemes or do not lend themselves to arrangements, mandatory or otherwise, that can be implemented under that bill. In our view the criteria currently in the bill are too broad, too wide and too numerous to allow any certainty for business.

Somewhere between those two perspectives there is a range of views that I think all witnesses were very consistent on, which said, 'We need a process here for a prioritisation,' and the coalition, I think, took the view that one way of guiding the government's discretion in that area is to narrow the range of criteria to which this kind of scheme can apply. We think that that is entirely appropriate.

We will support this bill, but I would seek for the minister, in his remarks before we close debate on this amendment, to address his understanding of the term 'significantly' as the government intends it to apply to the way that the criteria will be used.