THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AM AGENDA WITH LAURA JAYES
THURSDAY, 5 OCTOBER 2023
SUBJECTS: RECYCLING; ENVIRONMENT LAW REFORM; THE VOICE REFERENDUM.
LAURA JAYES: Welcome back to AM Agenda. We’re going to talk about recycling now because there is a recycling jobs boom in the works. And joining me now is Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek. Tanya, thanks so much for your time. This is your portfolio, of course. What’s driving it?
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Well, we’ve seen an extra billion dollars invested to increase our recycling capacity in Australia by a million extra tonnes every year. That’s the equivalent of 19 Harbour Bridges worth of extra recycling capacity, rubbish kept out of landfill. And it’s because the Commonwealth Government together with the states and territories and industry is investing in growing this extra recycling capacity. That’s about halfway through the extra investment that we have ready to roll out. We’ve already created 2,800 extra jobs in recycling. So here we’ve got something that’s great for the environment, really good for jobs, good for the economy as well. There’s three jobs in recycling for every job in landfill.
And, of course, actually recycling is good for other reasons economically as well. When we're recycling electronic goods, for example, and we’re capturing those precious metals instead of seeing them going to landfill, we can reuse them. It means that we are getting the maximum value out of the materials that we’re recycling. So it’s win-win-win-win.
JAYES: Is it offsetting – because we’ve spoken a lot about the fact that, you know, China, for example, a couple of years ago stopped taking our waste. It’s not completely offsetting that problem, though, is it?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Look, we still need to continue to increase our recycling capacity, absolutely we do. And I think it’s a good thing that we’re not exporting our waste out of Australia. I mean, you know, I think for too long it was out of sight, out of mind. We made our waste someone’s else’s problem. We need to deal with our own waste products. But it also reminds us, Laura, that actually a lot of this work has to happen in the design phase when we’re creating products in the first place. About 70 per cent of the waste is locked in in the design phase. So we need to be designing products that are easier to repair and easier to recycle or reuse.
And so as well as increasing our recycling capacity, we’re going right back to basics. I’ve set up a Circular Economy Advisory Group that’s chaired by John Thwaites, the former Deputy Premier of Victoria. They’re doing great work to help me work out how we get to become a more circular economy in Australia so we have more products that are designed for repair, reuse and recycling.
But we also need to think about the kind of materials we’re using in the first place. So a really interesting example here is plastic, of course. We want to reduce the use of virgin plastic. We want to recycle our plastic more. We want to increase the amount of recycled content in the plastic products that we’re making. But you need a sort of whole-systems approach to do that. So increased recycling capacity, but make sure that in the first place we’re using types of plastic that are more easily recycled.
Today I’m also talking about food and organic waste. We’ve got compostable packaging. It should be able to go into food and organic waste recycling, but in many cases it can’t because it’s coated with PFAS or other chemicals. So we need to look at that whole life cycle. But, you know, this is a very good news story for the Australian environment and it’s very good for Australian jobs.
JAYES: I know this is not directly in your remit, but some councils in Sydney you would know are talking about, you know, changing the way they collect garbage that means that, you know, some goods would only be collected on – you know, once every fortnight. This means that, you know, the compostable food scraps, for example, would go into the green bin and changing all that kind of stuff. Is that significant in your view?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Absolutely. Look, this is – it’s a complex area to get right because, as you say, councils are primarily responsible for waste collection and then, of course, we’ve got state and territory governments that have different approaches. So I know it seems like a minor thing, but in different states and territories you can or can’t recycle plastic bottle lids. In some places the recycling equipment is so old that the plastic bottle lids jam up the equipment. So we actually need more national consistency. We need to work with councils on collection. Ideally we should be able to collect soft plastics and food and organic waste at kerbside. But different states and territories and different council areas are more or less well advanced on doing that.
So what we’ve been doing with environment ministers, state and territory environment ministers, when we meet together we invite the Australian Local Government Association and across the three levels of government we’re trying to make sure that our collection is much more efficient, that we’ve got the recycling capacity to recycle what we can and then that we have end markets for those products. Like, there’s no good recycling our plastic into pellets and flakes and then not having the plastic manufacturing facilities here to use that recycled content. So we absolutely need to get that whole system right across the three levels of government with our industry partners as well.
JAYES: Yeah, right. I mean, there’s a lot of businesses, new and old, that have adapted because there’s a commercial interest in doing so. And I think that their customers are demanding that.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yep.
JAYES: But, look, I’ve never seen someone so happy and smiley to talk about recycling, so thanks for doing that this morning. But I haven’t spoken to you in a little while. In the meantime there has been that big decision on Woodside. I’ve spoken to, you know, some within the industry, particularly the oil and gas industry, that say this decision kind of blindsided them and there’s just not a level playing field here. And they want some consistency in the way these decisions are being made. Is that fair enough?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Look, the decisions about offshore oil and gas are in Madeleine King’s portfolio, but I can make a few general comments about what we’re trying to do with environmental laws. You know, we talk about land-based projects in my area. We’re trying to make sure through the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act reforms that we’re doing that we have better, stronger environmental protection because what Professor Graeme Samuel found in his review of our environment laws a few years ago was that the environment is just in constant decline in Australia. We actually are losing precious landscapes, we’re seeing more animals and plants added to our threatened species list all the time. We’re seeing a consistent level of environmental decline, and we have to change that. You know, we’ve got really stark examples like koalas are predicted to be extinct in New South Wales by 2050 if we keep going the way we’re going.
But, we also know that on the other hand business have been crying out for faster, clearer decisions. Now, that doesn’t mean that every time a business pitches up a project that it gets a yes. But for businesses, most of them will tell you that they would rather have a fast no than the sort of complex uncertainty that they’ve been dealing with in environmental law decision-making for many years now.
JAYES: Yeah, right.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: So our reforms are designed to give stronger environmental protections and faster, clearer decisions for business. And we’re reforming the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. We’re setting up an environment protection agency in Australia for the first time at a national level, so we’ll have decisions that are more arm’s length from government. So they should be more consistent, more rules based and more predictable. We’re also setting up Environment Information Australia, so we’ll actually have really good baseline environmental data. And business proponents will be able to say, “Look, I’m interested in building, I’m interested in doing a road project here or a housing development or a solar farm. Is this area likely to be available for development? Are there any threatened species here? Is it a critical landscape for some reason?” If the answer is yes, this area too precious to develop, it’s better to know that before you spend millions of dollars developing up a project. And if you say, “Okay, well, let’s look at the map. Here's an area that is, say, degraded farmland. It’s ripe for development as a renewable energy zone,” if you can see that on a map early on, that, again, is much better for business proponents.
So we’re trying to, you know, on the one hand give better environmental protection but on the other hand make these developments more predictable and easier to determine in a faster way. Because of course we need better environmental protections, but we still want jobs in Australia. We still need to build housing and roads and energy projects. So we feed to give that certainty as well.
JAYES: Okay. We might try and talk to Madeleine King about that as well. Just finally before I let you go, I wanted to ask you about the Yes campaign. We are now less than two weeks away. I find this even in, you know, personal, social discussions that it’s a really hard topic. I didn’t think it would get this way, but I wanted to ask you about two people in particular have put their faces to the Yes campaign. In recent days that has been Adam Goodes and also Nathan Cleary. Knowing particularly for Adam Goodes what he is walking into there you know, in terms of potential backlash and conflicts, and Nathan Cleary, what do you say to people about her the debate has got to at this point?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I want to thank Nathan and Adam for standing up and particularly of course Adam Goodes has already been the subject of so much public racism that it is a really gutsy thing for him to go out there again. And I watched his comments this morning. He talked about I think it’s his 22 month-old son and the sort of country he wants for this boy growing up. And I found it very moving - very moving.
I think, look, we've got just over a week to go. Clearly I am voting yes. I think this is - yes is a vote for recognition, it's a vote for reconciliation, it's a vote for listening, it’s a vote for better results, it’s a vote for better use of taxpayer funds. The Voice is not something that – it’s an advisory body. It won’t have a veto. It won’t be able to stop parliament doing anything. It won’t be able to make parliament do something. It’s an advisory body. And it is a little extraordinary that some of the misinformation out there you know, including deliberate misinformation, has been so extreme.
I think really the best thing people can do is read the official Yes material. Look at the booklet that was delivered to every household. That’s got the Yes and the No case written down. Try and ignore the misinformation because for me this is a simple question: do the people who’ve lived here for 65,000 years deserve to be recognised in our constitution? Yes. Do we want better results? Yes. Yes to listening. A no vote is a vote for more of the same, and I think most Australians acknowledge that when it comes to the life expectancy gap, education, employment, we want to see those gaps closed.
JAYES: Tanya Plibersek, thank you for your time. We’ll see you soon.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Always a pleasure. Thanks Laura.
END
