2016-09-05
Ms SPRINGLE (South Eastern Metropolitan) — It is with great pleasure that I rise to sum up on this important issue and this important private members bill that I have introduced to the house. I would firstly like to acknowledge and thank all of the members that have contributed today. It is enormously gratifying to hear such broad-based support for the intention of this bill. I absolutely 100 per cent acknowledge that as members of this chamber from very different backgrounds and parties we are going to have differing views on how we need to get to the end result that seems to be an inevitability. I also acknowledge and welcome the opportunity for this Parliament to explore the issues of industry and economy in relation to plastic pollution. It is an absolutely vital part of this equation and needs due consideration. So the fact that there has been broad agreement to send this bill to a committee for further investigation I think is a wonderful outcome for public policy development on this issue. I am very with pleased with that, as a result.
There are a couple of things I would like to respond to in terms of the contributions that have been made today. They are around taking people on the journey with us and taking people from the community, industry and environment sector on the journey that we need to take to transition away from using harmful polluting plastics. I would just like to note, and I think I did say this in my second-reading speech, that the Greens in developing this piece of legislation did conduct extensive community consultation. We had over 500 submissions from individuals and community groups across Victoria for this very bill. Therefore, while I accept you can always do more and you can always hear from more people and from more stakeholders, when we were looking at this bill absolutely every effort was made to hear the voice of the community and to take on the board its feedback. Having said that, there is always more we can do, so I am absolutely gratified that the committee will take a good amount of time to look at this legislation and do more analysis of the mechanisms of the bill.
It is also worth reminding the chamber that in April this year the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee in its report titled Toxic tide — the threat of marine plastic pollution in Australia did definitively recommend urgent action on a national level, which included creating a container deposit scheme and banning plastic bags. So it is with urgency that we must act on this issue. While I absolutely think we need to take the community and industry along with us on the journey, we cannot delay any longer. In all honesty, that has been one of the challenges that the Council of Australian Governments process has presented us with, in that while I think everyone agrees that we need action it is just too slow and we do need to hasten that process if we are to avoid irreparable damage. It is up for argument as to whether that is already the case. I would just like to note and acknowledge in the chamber that this is an urgent matter.
The other thing I might say in relation to industry is that it is incredibly important that we help industry transition out of the production and distribution of harmful products. That is obviously what this bill aims to do. Like a lot of other harmful products and industries, transition is the key. While doing so in a responsible fashion, it certainly does not mean that we should not be doing something about the issue.
We also should take into account that there are other jurisdictions within Australia that have done very similar things, and there has not been a huge adverse impact upon the economy. In fact in some areas they actually found that it was very beneficial for the economy, if the transition is done responsibly. So I do not think we should necessarily look at this as a negative challenge. We should probably be looking at it as an opportunity — an opportunity to start doing things differently. Once again, I think that the investigation of the committee will illuminate some of these opportunities in a much more robust fashion.
Lastly, I would like to thank the countless groups, communities and individuals — thousands upon thousands of people who have been campaigning for a plastic ban across Victoria for many years. I would like to thank the scientists that have put a lot of their working careers into research and development around the negative impacts of plastic pollution. I would like to acknowledge them, and I would like to thank them for their tireless work in that regard. A lot of what we have done in the preparation of this bill has relied on their work and the robustness of the solid research that they have come up with over the years. I would absolutely like to thank them and acknowledge them for their work. We could not have done this without them. We could not have done this without the community momentum that has been building over the last some years around plastic pollution and the damaging effects of that.
With that, I would once again like to thank members. There has been broad support across the chamber. I look forward to the report from the committee in February.
Ms Dunn's amendment agreed to.
Amended amendment agreed to.