Tuesday, 16 August 2022

Bills

Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (14:49): I rise to join the debate on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. In starting off my contribution I would like to correct for the record what the member for Bentleigh said in his contribution before we went to question time. It would pay for the member for Bentleigh to actually do his own research when he speaks on bills rather than just take the speaking points that are given to him by the government. He would see, if he went and did his own research, that the Liberal and National parties had embraced a number of the things that are covered in this bill for years before it was actually brought forward by the Andrews government, particularly the waste-to-energy technology. I personally and a number of our shadow ministers—and it goes back to when we were in government—have been on the journey with Australian Paper, which is now called Opal, down at Morwell. It has a facility that has been through all the environment effects statement process now and is starting to progress towards construction. That project is an example of what can be done right across Victoria in how we turn our waste, our red-bin rubbish, into energy, and the small amount of residual waste that comes out of that burning process, which if you look at the European example can actually go into road-making material. It is effectively whole of life; it does not go to landfill, it goes back and is used for something worthwhile. So on the fact that the member for Bentleigh and others are saying the Liberal-National parties have not been part of this debate, we have been part of this and led this debate well before the Andrews government decided to do something about it.

It is a pity that in this legislation there is going to be a cap put on the amount of waste that can go to energy. My assumption is that that cap is there to appease the Greens because the Greens are actually opposed to waste to energy, the whole concept. If you talk to the Greens, they say we should just reduce the waste that goes to landfill, not that we should do something with it. We can never have zero waste; there has never been zero waste as long as man has walked on this earth. So there will be waste. We need to make sure it is managed appropriately, and having waste to energy takes that waste and turns it into baseload power.

In the case of Opal, the real advantage for Opal of a waste-to-energy plant is not only the electricity that is generated, it is actually also the steam that is generated that can go into their papermaking process—and then they go a step further. Opal has a third stage to this particular plant that they are building where they are going to use the warm water that comes out of this process to grow barramundi. The original concept, before the waste-to-energy plant they designed was halved in size because they could not get enough waste, was they were going to grow 10 000 tonnes a year of barramundi with the warm water coming out of this plant. That has been scaled down, so it is not going to be that large, but the capacity is there in the future to be growing 10 000 tonnes of barramundi out of that facility with the warm water that comes from the waste-to-energy plant. So not only do they get electricity and steam for their papermaking process, they also get the warm water to actually breed barramundi.

For those who have heard me talk about it in this place before, those barramundi are actually bred at Werribee. The facility there at Werribee breeds something like 50 per cent of the fingerlings that go all around the world to farm barramundi. So it is a great story for Victoria, where we have had the technology to breed barramundi developed and those barramundi are being exported, but in this case now there is a partnership formed with MainStream Aquaculture that will see those barramundi fingerlings go to the Latrobe Valley and be turned into fish. The Liberal-National parties have been passionate supporters of waste to energy for a long time, will continue to be that and do not believe there should be a cap on the amount of waste that can go to energy.

One of the things that was driving the Opal project was that if you look at the Hampton Park waste facility in the east that will be full in 2025. If that happens and there is not a facility to take that waste in the east of the state—which the Opal plant would have done—it will mean that all that landfill will have to go across the West Gate Bridge to Ravenhall, and that would see somewhere between 300 and 400 truckloads a day of waste from the eastern suburbs being taken across the bridge to Ravenhall, making that facility fill up even more quickly again. So we want to see more waste to energy, not less waste to energy, and do not want to see a cap on the amount of waste that goes to energy in the future.

There are two other parts I want to talk about in this legislation in my time for the contribution. One is the whole issue of container deposit in Victoria and making sure that our regional businesses actually have the opportunity to be part of a container deposit scheme in Victoria. A number of us have met with the regional waste businesses, and they are very concerned that when this whole process started the Andrews government and particularly the Minister for Energy and Minister for Environment and Climate Action was setting it up in such a way that it was only large multinationals that would be able to tender to be part of the container deposit scheme. You had to have a container deposit contract in Melbourne to qualify to have one in regional Victoria. There have been ongoing discussions—some fruitful, some not—but the regional waste management companies have come together to form a group that wants to make sure they and their communities have the opportunity to be part of a container deposit scheme. Someone in Shepparton, someone in Horsham and someone in Bairnsdale should have the opportunity to be part of that process with their business. You also then have the effect that volunteer groups, whether they be football clubs, netball clubs, scouting groups, guides groups, whatever, can be part of the collection of cans and bottles, which can be put through the system locally rather than having a major multinational take all that money out of those communities and not put any jobs back into them. I would urge the government to make sure that they have a process, as they set up the container deposit program, whereby regional businesses and regional community groups can benefit from that particular project into the future.

The last thing I wanted to touch on is the issue around the waste levy trust. As recently as last week I met with the Loddon Campaspe group of councils in Echuca. Every time I meet with a council or a group of councils one of the things they always raise is the amount of money that is sitting in that trust account for the waste management levy that is charged. They all say they could do a better job of managing waste in their community if they could get some money out of that fund to actually do what it was originally set up for. When that levy was put in place years ago, it was to assist councils and those that manage waste to reduce waste going to landfill. It has evolved over time, where it is now just a pot of money for the Treasurer to hold onto to prop up the budget. If you look at the situation, the chronic situation, of the budget in Victoria, that money is in a pot to one side that the Treasurer is not letting out and is not letting go back to local government or those that manage waste in this state to do projects to reduce waste to landfill. It is very, very disappointing, and all those councils are very, very angry that they are collecting money from all their ratepayers, which is going into the Consolidated Fund, which is effectively quarantined by the Treasurer and cannot be spent on its original purpose—to reduce waste to landfill—because it props up the bottom line of the budget. If it was all spent, that would mean, technically, Victoria could go into deficit. We would like to see that money utilised for what it is supposed to be used for, and that is for it to go particularly to local government—they are the ones that collect it from their ratepayers—to make sure it does the job it is supposed to.

In the briefing that was given to the Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change a commitment was given that the change of that levy fund, with it being used to fund Recycling Victoria, would be within the current spending envelope. I must admit, I and probably most of the councils I meet with are rather cynical about that commitment. They are concerned that this is just a cash grab from ratepayers right across Victoria to put money into the budget by stealth and not return it to the community to reduce waste going to landfill into the future. We need to make sure, as was flagged by the shadow minister, that there is not a cap on waste going to energy and that that money out of the waste levy is used for what it was intended to do, and that is to help councils reduce waste going to landfill.

Ms COUZENS (Geelong) (14:59): Speaker, can I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your new role and being elevated to Speaker. It is certainly great to see you in that new position.

I am really pleased to rise to contribute to the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. I want to begin by firstly acknowledging and thanking the Minister for Environment and Climate Action for her nation-leading work. The work that she has done on this bill and across the climate change and environment portfolio has been exceptional, and I think we all owe her a huge vote of thanks for the work that she has done.

I know my community are very excited about it. They are very excited about this bill in particular because it is about generating jobs—meaningful jobs—that support the importance of addressing climate change and meeting our targets. My community have been very vocal about these issues. They are very concerned about climate change and the impacts of climate change in the Geelong region, so they do welcome this because it ensures we have a reliable recycling system in Victoria by introducing a four-bin system and a container deposit scheme.

Our communities expect us to take action on climate change. Many constituents, particularly children and young people, raise the issue of climate change with me fairly regularly, and I know other members in this place have the same experience—that particularly children and young people are concerned about it. Children are learning about climate change and are wanting not only their parents but our broader community to take action, and I know that this government is certainly doing that. Our communities do expect action on climate change. Many in my community welcome the action taken by the Andrews government, and the Geelong region’s population growth is unprecedented at the moment. The City of Greater Geelong’s population forecast for 2022 is almost 275 000 people. This is forecast to grow to around 400 000 people by 2041, so there are concerns about the impact of climate change. The community knows that our waste and recycling system plays a vital role in the functionality and livability of our cities and regions such as Geelong. It has been wonderful to see the election of a Labor federal government, who have taken climate change very seriously and are making enormous moves in addressing the impacts of climate change.

I have to say it has been interesting listening to the opposition and their take on this. I do not know whether they have suddenly decided to read the room or not, but they certainly have not supported addressing climate change in this place during my eight years here. This is the first I have heard from them that they have suddenly found that climate change is an important issue in our community. It was not that long ago that the Leader of the Opposition was in Geelong saying that the government had no role to play in addressing climate change and that it was up to the private sector to take that action. So it is very interesting, the sudden change now, and as I said, maybe they are reading the room and what is happening throughout the state of Victoria.

We do know that Victorians want action on climate change. They welcome our government leading the way on addressing climate change and ensuring that we protect the environment now and for the future, and that is what many families are looking at now. As I mentioned earlier, children and young people, their parents—everybody is concerned about climate change and really concerned that what we do will impact the future between now and when their children are older and become adults.

This bill is a once-in-a-generation reform of Victoria’s waste and recycling sector and supports a transition to a circular economy. The bill delivers additional reforms to the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021 as well as the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005 and the Environment Protection Act 2017 to support our state’s transition to a circular economy. We have invested an unprecedented $515 million to deliver this transition, which will support the creation of more than 3900 jobs, deliver on our climate change targets and ensure Victorians have a recycling system they can rely on. Most of us are aware of the failure of the recycling system back in 2018, I think it was, and the impact that had on our communities. I know it certainly impacted Geelong. People were horrified to find out we were sending our recycling over to China, that we were not actually addressing the issues as we are now through this bill and many other different areas of addressing climate change and protecting our environment.

This bill specifically deals with a waste-to-energy scheme, which is really important, and I know that there is a lot of excitement about this. I know the member for Lara, who is in the chamber now, and I have had lots of discussions with our community about this. Geelong Sustainability have been very active in talking about this. So we are really pleased that the waste-to-energy scheme is part of this bill.

The Victorian recycling infrastructure plan is another really important aspect to this bill. In my community—and I am sure right across this state—people are concerned about recycling, and I think the opportunities that we now have going forward with the recycling plan are really, really important. People are excited about what that will bring—not only the opportunities for protecting our environment but certainly some of the fundraising efforts that may come out of that. I know that lots in our community are now looking at that as an important way of moving forward to deal with our recycling. We talk about other states around this country which already have those plans implemented, but I think what we have done is looked at all of those and come up with the best possible model, which is why it has taken a bit of time. But I know in my community people have expressed their support for us taking our time and doing things properly, and that has been a really important focus.

The risk, consequence and contingency framework forms part of this bill, and the framework is to ensure risk and consequences are identified and managed and contingency plans are implemented to minimise the impacts of serious disruptions to waste, recycling and resource recovery service delivery. The bill also requires the head of Recycling Victoria to prepare an annual market report and provides a function to prepare market strategies. For compliance and enforcement, which are additional tools outlined in the bill, it provides for a new compliance tool on application by RV where courts may make monetary benefit orders to get illegal profits from non-compliance with waste and recycling laws. There are information-sharing reforms. The bill also amends the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005 and the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021 to provide Sustainability Victoria with a new information-sharing regime, including to carry out its functions and to support its continuing close work with Recycling Victoria, Environment Protection Authority Victoria and local councils.

The bill will make amendments to the Environment Protection Act 2017 to improve its efficiency, including amendments to further equip the EPA and local government with powers to effectively undertake their regulatory functions under the Environment Protection Act 2017, such as enabling the EPA and councils to appoint third parties as authorised officers and amendments to mitigate the risks of liquidators avoiding clean-up costs. We know all about that. I am sure the member for Lara knows all about that and some of the work that had to be done.

This bill is really important. It is really important to my community of Geelong and certainly to all cities and regions across Victoria. It is a piece of work that I think this government should be very proud of. I know the opposition have got their point of view, but certainly that is new in coming; they have not really supported addressing climate change and recycling in this place in the past. I commend this bill to the house.

Mr SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (15:09): The previous member just mentioned the fact that it has taken us a while to get to the point of having some action on the environment and climate change. Can I remind the government that back in 2018, five years ago, when we found out that we had a major, major problem with recycling materials, with waste, our first policy in this term was a container deposit scheme and a waste-to-energy program. That is what we did. That was the first thing that we did. And what did the government do? They did not come on board; they commissioned a report, a study. At that particular time we knew that there was an absolute problem in terms of collecting waste.

Mr Newbury: The market collapsed.

Mr SOUTHWICK: We saw, as the member for Brighton, our Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change, quite correctly pointed out, our market collapse. We had China refusing to take our waste. The fact is that we were exporting our waste to China because we could not manage it locally. The government, rather than responding with some real action on this, turned around and said, ‘You know what? We’ll kick it down the road. We’ll do a report. We won’t look at waste to energy; we’ll actually rule waste to energy out. We won’t bring a container deposit scheme on board. We’ll just leave it to the devices of councils, and we’ll do a review’.

Well, where are we now? Five years later we have more questions about when this is going to start, why it has taken so long and why there is a cap on a waste-to-energy program—more questions than answers—and we still do not have a start date of when we can actually tackle the problem that we have. Our landfills are full. Councils do not know what to do with it because the government is not giving them any answers. The only thing councils are now doing is providing more bins. Well, we are going to have more bins than we are going to have the ability to use because there is no ability to handle the recycling program properly, because the government have done nothing. They have sat on their hands.

You see other programs around the world that are working. In Victoria they are failing. I can recall as a boy going to the footy with my father and collecting the cans at Moorabbin through the scouts. There would be a collection point, you would get a couple of cents a can, you would make a few dollars and the aluminium cans would be recycled—a great program. Fast forward I do not know how many years later—I do not want to actually disclose, but a number of years later—and we have gone backwards. It is back to the future. I mean, seriously, the government have had so long to do something about it, and they have done nothing.

Now we are talking about the possibility of a container deposit scheme but have not worked out when, how or why. Seriously, how can this government be taken seriously when they have spent so much time talking about it and not acting? We know from our side the Liberal-Nationals are about empowering people to make decisions, empowering people to take action and putting targets in place like our 2030 climate change target of a 50 per cent reduction—real targets, legislated targets, so people can actually take action. We can empower people to take action with things like a container deposit scheme. What if the government, rather than having another review or another report, actually said, ‘Let’s get it up and running, and let’s empower scouts, others, the community, kids and schools to get the recycling program up and running’? Let us do it.

As for a waste-to-energy program, we have an energy shortage here in Victoria. The costs are skyrocketing. We have never seen energy prices so high, and yet the government turns around and says, ‘Well, we’re going to cap waste to energy. We’re going to put a cap on it’. Why cap it if there is an opportunity to turn waste into energy, to reduce prices and to recycle so we do not end up with landfill that is overflowing and so we do not export overseas? Imagine the environmental cost of putting waste on a ship and sending it halfway around the world and what the cost of that would be. I mean, this is ridiculous. Seriously, we should be able to come up with better solutions to do this.

We talk a lot in this Parliament about innovation. Well, the government would not know innovation if they fell over it. This is a really good opportunity to embrace it, to get the private sector to come out with real solutions and to be able to say to them, ‘You know what? If you can come up with waste to energy, go for it’. I had a meeting years ago with Australian Paper, big energy users—huge energy users—in the valley. A lot of the energy from the coal-fired power stations gets diverted into powering up for paper that we all use every day. They had a waste-to-energy program that they wanted the government to invest in years ago. Now, if the government had taken that up and taken up a lot of the cost of doing that—if the government had listened years ago—you could have diverted a lot of that power, you could have actually closed some of those power stations earlier and you could have had less impact on the environment. The government talk about this stuff; they do not do it. There was a plan there; the government could have been working with a big energy user and been able to divert some of that power. At the very least it could have lowered energy bills as well as reducing the impact on the environment from climate change.

These are real solutions. These are things that need to be done now. We cannot talk about it, we cannot keep saying we need another review, we cannot keep sending it to another committee for another report. That is just wasting time. When we go around—the member for Brighton and I share bordering electorates—and we talk to a number of residents every day, we talk to a number of locals every day, they ask, ‘What are you going to do today, tomorrow, next week on climate change?’. It is no use having fluffy discussions about things without doing stuff now.

Our tree canopy program is about 2 million trees. It is $20 million for 2 million trees. It is, again, to tackle climate change by planting them, getting young people planting them in many of our suburbs, to ensure we offset the carbon. That is a real solution. It is about our renewable program of solar but also batteries to give people choice. Solar for renters as well—I was talking to a number of people in rental properties at the weekend. They would love to get into solar, but they cannot because there is no ability to do that. Again, we do not want to lock people out. We want to give people choice, and that is what the Liberals are about—giving people choice. It is about a hydrogen program to look at alternative fuels. Again, green solutions—these are all green solutions. It is about investing in the research but also investing in the infrastructure. Both things are needed to be able to get it done, both things are needed to ensure that Victoria is a leader in this space and both things are needed to reduce emissions, lower costs and lower energy bills.

Over the last few days the Herald Sun has been and for the next week will be running full reports on the cost of living, each and every day, for families that are impacted. They cannot afford their energy bills. We saw a story just today about houses that are not insulated properly. People are shivering. People are having to wear jumpers, blankets—whatever they can—just to keep warm. They cannot afford to heat their homes and they cannot afford to insulate their homes, and the government are doing nothing. Again, another talkfest—we have got to be able to fix it. We have got to be able to support all Victorians, not pick and choose who we support. We have got to ensure that the vulnerable can insulate, can heat their homes, can put food on the table. The government is doing none of that.

Here is a great example of a government that is now legislating something that should have been done years ago. It has no targets, with no start date, with no workings. Let us roll out who is going to do some of this stuff. What industry have they been talking to? Where are they? Where is the start date? What plants? What is going to be done on the waste program? Where is the energy going to go? What is it going to be offset against? Who is going to do the container deposit scheme? How is it set up?

If you look at councils at the moment that are slugged costs, that are slugged money, effectively none of them are being supported in terms of what they are doing. What is the government doing to support those councils to ensure there is a solution for that waste? I have been to many of the landfills. I have been out to Werribee and to some of the parts where we have our landfills, which are full—chockers—at the moment. There is no plan to divert that. There is no ability to work with many of the providers, and some of those, like Cleanaway and others, have offered up solutions when it comes to waste-to-energy programs as well. There are people there at the moment offering real solutions—private sector, councils. Ballarat and the west put a group together looking at waste to energy. There have been people talking about this for years. For five years now we have been talking about it, and for five years the Andrews Labor government have done nothing about it. If the Andrews Labor government were serious about the environment and climate change, they would have done something by now, not waited five years. Five years is a talkfest. Five years is too long, and five years is far too long for people in terms of dealing with energy costs, solutions on climate change and tackling the real problems. This has been nothing but a talkfest, and unfortunately it is too little, too late when it comes to waste, energy solutions and tackling issues around the environment.

Mr MAAS (Narre Warren South) (15:19): It gives me great pleasure to rise to make a contribution today to the debate on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. We are making a suite of changes to the act in the bill, and this is one among many which are really great for the state. What we are seeing is a suite of legislation which has been passed, all of this working towards our waste and recycling, to be able to lower our emissions and to be able to reduce carbon in the economy. The bill delivers additional reforms to the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021 as well as the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005 and the Environment Protection Act 2017 to support our state’s transition to a circular economy. There has been investment in particular targeted areas. There has been some $515 million to deliver the transition, and this will support the creation of some 3900 jobs, and that delivers on our climate change targets and ensures Victorians have a recycling system that they can rely upon as well.

There are key elements to the bill that I would like to speak to, and the first part of that is the waste-to-energy scheme. The bill introduces a thermal waste-to-energy scheme that caps the processing of certain types of permitted waste at facilities that process the waste using thermal waste-to-energy processes, and that is key. Part of this is to ensure that there is a cap, because it is about creating a balance, and we do not want to be like other jurisdictions around the world where they now have to keep importing waste from other countries to have those waste-to-fuel energy plants. So having that cap is really important, and this bill provides for that. It provides for the head of the recently formed Recycling Victoria to license thermal waste-to-energy facilities in Victoria, and the head of Recycling Victoria cannot just issue licences that collectively exceed an annual cap on permitted waste—and that is being expressed as 1 million tonnes per financial year.

Another key element of the bill is that it enables the head of Recycling Victoria to deliver a Victorian recycling infrastructure plan consolidating the existing multiplan framework into a single plan, and it does that across a 30-year horizon to inform long-term strategic planning and support decision-making as well. These are multimillion-dollar plants, and the contracts need to be done over that sort of time horizon. The great thing to look forward to is that we will be able to recycle much more than we are recycling today.

The third element is in terms of a risk, consequence and contingency framework. The bill establishes this to ensure the risks and consequences are identified and managed and that contingency plans are implemented to minimise impacts of serious disruptions to waste recycling and resource recovery service delivery.

There is a compliance and enforcement element to the bill providing for a new compliance tool on application by Recycling Victoria where courts may make monetary benefit orders to get the illegal profits made from non-compliance with the waste and recycling laws. There are also information-sharing reforms, amending the Sustainability Victoria Act and the circular economy act to provide Sustainability Victoria with a new information-sharing regime, including to carry out its functions and to support its continuing close work with Recycling Victoria, Environment Protection Authority Victoria and local councils as well. The bill, finally, makes amendments to the Environment Protection Act to improve efficacy, including amendments to further equip the EPA and local government with powers to effectively undertake their regulatory functions under the Environment Protection Act 2017, enabling the EPA and councils to appoint third parties as authorised officers and amendments to mitigate the risk of liquidators avoiding clean-up costs. So we are looking towards a new economy. Recycling Victoria: A New Economy is a 10-year plan to address the urgent challenges in the recycling sector and make fundamental changes to prevent those issues from occurring. Under the policy, the government has committed to overhauling our household recycling services—the much-talked-about four-bin system which is being introduced and a container deposit scheme as well to improve the value captured from the materials that we recycle.

The government has also committed to the establishment of a new government body, Recycling Victoria, which as I have already mentioned began on 1 July this year. The Recycling Victoria: A New Economy plan sets four ambitious targets for improving our state’s recycling system. They are to divert 80 per cent of waste from landfill by 2030, with the target of 72 per cent by 2025; to cut total waste generation by 15 per cent per capita by 2030; to halve the volume of organic material going into landfill between 2020 and 2030, and that is with an interim target of a 20 per cent reduction by 2025; and also to ensure every Victorian household has access to food and garden organic waste recycling services or local composting by 2030. The plan also includes a commitment to address plastics pollution. In February 2021 the government announced a ban on specific single-use plastics as a show of our commitment as well.

Recycling of course is one of the primary ways most Victorians engage with sustainability policy. Everyone puts things in the bin, and when people put things in the recycling bin they want to do so having that confidence and just knowing that those materials will actually be re-used and repurposed as well. We know that an industry as large as the waste and recycling industry requires strong regulation, and up until 1 July this year there had not been one central body responsible for this regulation. Our government changed that by creating Recycling Victoria, a body responsible for overseeing and providing strategic leadership for the sector. The bill includes important reforms that will allow Recycling Victoria to provide that leadership and that guidance that is needed, and they will have the powers to oversee and anticipate, as well as mitigate, the risks to that as well.

In conclusion, the government remains committed to pursuing an ambitious waste and recycling agenda. The bill represents the continuation of the government’s major transformational reform of the waste and recycling sector, built on community expectations as well as community and industry consultation over many, many years. The reforms deliver a further milestone in Victoria’s transition to a circular economy and, given the scale of the reforms and the adjustments required by all participants in that transition, it is appropriate to keep building the functions and capabilities of the newly formed Recycling Victoria over time. The government will continue working alongside the community and all stakeholders as these reforms progress. It is a good bill, its timing is perfect and I commend the bill to the house.

Ms RYAN (Euroa) (15:29): I welcome the opportunity to contribute today to the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. May I, at the outset, Deputy Speaker, congratulate you on your elevation to your role. It is the first opportunity that I have had, and it is great to see two women in the chair as Speaker and Deputy Speaker. Please accept my congratulations on that.

The main provisions of this bill, as other people have outlined, are to establish Victoria’s thermal waste-to-energy scheme and to put in place a statewide infrastructure planning framework around waste-to-energy and also a new risk, consequence and contingency planning framework. I understand that this in part arises out of a policy from the government in February 2020 which dealt with recycling.

I firstly want to make the point, as I think other speakers on our side of the house have done, that the Liberals and The Nationals really have led the way in this space in recent years. I do think that leadership from the government is well overdue. There were the issues of course around the collapse of SKM and the fact that Victorians discovered—I do think ‘discovered’ is the right word because I think many of us did not realise—that our waste was being shipped offshore to China to become their problem to deal with. But all of those issues happened some five years ago now, so Victorians have been waiting a long time for some leadership and some action in the energy-from-waste and the circular economy space.

We have championed the development of policy in this area. The Nationals, both at a state and a federal level, have been quite vocal in this space, particularly around the Opal plant in Gippsland at Maryvale, as the Leader of The Nationals referred to. The development of an energy-from-waste facility down there is something to really be applauded and supported. I know that Darren Chester, as the federal member for Gippsland, secured more than $48 million to be invested in that facility to see it get off the ground. That proposal will see up to 325 000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste diverted from landfill to generate electricity. And it is not just electricity, it is baseload power as well, which we know is of critical importance as we transition to a greener mix of energy sources. It will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 270 000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent each year, so it is a very significant project and one that I would love to see the Victorian government strongly support.

But at a state level we have also very much been leading the way in this space, as the Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change said in his earlier contribution. Of course we did adopt the need for a container deposit scheme in Victoria ahead of the government, but we also did significant policy work in the energy-from-waste space, releasing our policy on zero waste to landfill by 2035 in 2020—some two years ahead of the legislation which is before us today. That policy, if we have the very good fortune of being elected in November and have the opportunity to implement it, will not just deliver baseload energy but ensure that we are responsible with our waste. I think that is incredibly important. As good global citizens we do need to find new ways of dealing with the products that we utilise and consume on a daily basis as a state. I do not think it is good enough for us to be simply shipping that offshore for another country to deal with. That highlights the problem of when perhaps relationships between countries deteriorate or export markets fall over. We are then left with a very, very significant problem. But that is our problem to address and a problem that we should, from the outset, be seeking to ameliorate rather than simply shoving it off for another nation to deal with.

Under the policy that we announced back in 2020, which a lot of good thinking went into, we would have seen a 100 per cent reduction of household waste going to landfill by 2035—incredibly significant. We would be investing $120 million to establish a recycling futures stream and an energy-from-waste stream out of the Sustainability Fund, and we would be committing state government departments to working with industry to expedite approvals to get our waste management back on track. I just quickly want to touch on that issue around a recycling futures stream because I think there is a huge amount of work to be done in this space. There are a lot of innovative, very clever brains who have been working on things like crushing glass for road base and finding ways to actually recycle products to help deliver the things that we need on a day-to-day basis. But they do need support, and they do in many cases simply need the government to accept and use their ideas. Sometimes they are not seeking money; they are just seeking support from the government.

I know from previously working in the roads space that we have a very, very high level of conservatism within our roads bureaucracy. That sometimes means we are not as innovative or as adaptable as we could be, and I think this is one space where we should be actually seeking to marry together these two policy objectives of better roads whilst also dealing with a waste product. I also particularly want to pay tribute to my colleague in the upper house Melina Bath for her work on the Environment and Planning Committee, and in particular a minority report that she did, through the renewable energy inquiry it did in the other place back in 2020, which really canvassed a lot of these issues and also reaffirmed our commitment to attain net zero emissions by 2050, and of course the shadow minister, who continues to do a power of work in this space also, the member for Brighton.

But a conversation in this space is not really complete without also touching on the fact that we do need more than just rhetoric from the government. I want to particularly reflect on a number of the cuts to climate change outputs that were made in this year’s budget. Unfortunately we saw hundreds of millions of dollars slashed out of the environment and climate change portfolio, and particularly efforts around solar, in this year’s budget. I have raised this in the house before. There was a 16 per cent reduction in funding for the climate change output in this year’s budget, and a 36.5 per cent reduction to Solar Victoria’s budget. They are very significant cuts. So I think we need to see more from the government than rhetoric and lovely words in this space. We actually need to see that backed up by tangible action.

In summary, we do need to see more support for those very innovative projects like at Opal, and with the policy commitments that we are taking to Victorians at this year’s state election we will see that. We will see these very innovative ideas driven forward if the Liberals and The Nationals are given the good fortune of governing after this year’s election. I think that is what Victorians are asking for. As I said earlier, many Victorians were horrified to discover that we were simply exporting our problems internationally. They are asking for strong leadership in this space and they want to see us as a state being responsible. The reality is that the collapse of SKM Recycling put huge pressure back on councils, and that put huge pressure back on ratepayers. It is the responsibility of the state to provide good and sound leadership in this space to ensure that such crises do not occur again and to ensure that we are providing not just good leadership for the state but good global leadership to ensure that as we go forward we are dealing with the issues that we are creating through our own consumerism as opposed to expecting other countries to deal with those problems.

We will not be opposing this legislation. We do have some concerns with it, which we will canvass more fully in the upper house. I am hopeful that we will have an opportunity after this year’s state election to implement what I think is a very sound and well thought through policy agenda in this space.

Ms CRUGNALE (Bass) (15:39): I rise to speak to the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. I will firstly respond to the member for Caulfield and put on the record that we have announced the biggest household energy package in the country’s history, helping 250 000 low-income households replace old gas, electric and wood heaters with highly efficient, reverse-cycle split systems; upgrading 35 000 social housing properties; and expanding the Victorian energy upgrades program. We are also helping to make sure people can meet the increased power costs brought about by international conflicts and outages across the country with our $250 power saving bonus. We have set ambitious renewable energy targets of 50 per cent renewables by 2030 and 40 per cent by 2025, and we have already smashed our first target of 25 per cent by 2020, with more than 32 per cent of power coming from renewables last year. The Clean Energy Council’s Clean Energy at Work report shows that Victoria has created more jobs in renewables than any other state, and with some massive offshore wind stuff happening off Bass Coast and South Gippsland that is only going to get better.

Back to the circular economy—well, it is all part of the circular economy—this bill, which forms a central part of the Andrews Labor government’s once-in-a-generation reform of our waste and recycling system, ought to make it effective, accountable and consistent, and consistent with our community’s expectations. This bill delivers additional reforms to the act, and it also provides Recycling Victoria with additional powers and functions. It reforms the Environment Protection Act 2017 to allow Recycling Victoria to be funded from the waste levy, and it also reforms the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005, all to support our state’s transition to a circular economy. To deliver this transition our government has invested $515 million, which supports more than 3900 jobs, delivers of course on our climate change targets and makes sure that we Victorians have a recycling system that we can rely on.

If we go back, just for a bit of context, to 2019, we had terrible waste and recycling services. We had disruptions in those waste and recycling services. We saw the collapse of SKM Recycling, which left 33 councils without kerbside recycling services, leaving many with no choice but to send recyclable material to landfill. This coincided with the announcement of China’s National Sword policy, which banned the import of most plastics and other materials for recycling. These disruptions and also changes in global markets exposed our waste and recycling system and exposed the effects on the ground in our local recycling service delivery. They also really highlighted that the waste and recycling industry, as large as it is, required strong regulation, and so forward we walked. At the time, our government provided a $6.6 million relief package to assist councils impacted by these disruptions and worked in partnership with them as well as industry and the wider public to develop a policy which would address the issues in our waste and recycling sector.

We also saw a lack of consistency across the state’s recycling system. Each council has a different bin system with different standards as to what can be placed in each bin, and as a government we lacked the power to direct councils when it came to these services. Following public consultation back in February 2020 our government released Recycling Victoria: A New Economy, our 10-year circular economy policy. We also committed to the establishment of a new government body, Recycling Victoria, which began operating just on 1 July this year. It is responsible for overseeing and providing that strategic leadership for the sector. This bill requires this new entity to prepare a single 30-year Victorian recycling infrastructure plan—and we love plans. Under this policy our government committed to overhauling our household recycling services, introducing that four-bin system where everyone has got the same-coloured lids and a container deposit scheme to improve the value captured from the materials we recycle. In all that, too, there are targets, and we also love targets—and ambitious ones at that. We have got four of them. The first one is to divert 80 per cent of waste from landfill by 2030, and there is an interim target as well of 72 per cent by 2025; to cut total waste generation by 15 per cent per capita by 2030; to halve the volume of organic material going to landfill—that is great—between 2020 and 2030; and to ensure that every Victorian has access to food and garden organic waste recycling services or local composting by 2030. We all put something in the bin, and when we put something in the recycling bin we want to have that confidence and assurance that it is going to be re-used and repurposed. Waste less, recycle more—and waste to landfill we know is a waste. Back in my council days—it feels like a lifetime ago and last century, but it was only 2016—I was very proud to be part of a council where we introduced as part of our waste management the food organics and garden organics bin, and we were the 12th local government area in the state to do that at the time. Since its introduction it has diverted 78 per cent of waste or more from landfill. Grantville, in the electorate of Bass also, is where the cells are—and they are not cheap. But it means less methane, reducing greenhouse gas emissions; it means the cells that are there last longer, which is good for economics; and it means the organics go up to the soil and organic recycling facility in Dutson Downs in Sale to be turned into compost and nutrients that go back into the land to improve agricultural and horticultural productivity, which is great. We are very happy about our organics, and it is great to see now Cardinia shire and Casey have introduced it as well, so it is a win-win circular economy. What is really interesting though is it has certainly confused a lot of holiday home owners that come down to the Bass Coast. It has taken a little while for everyone. They have a different bin system in the city or wherever else they live, and when they come down on holidays, you know, the recycling only gets picked up every fortnight and the green bin of course every week with the organics, so there was a bit of education that council had to do at the time. I think underlying it, it was like: ‘We really value our environment in the Bass Coast, and we want everyone visiting to do the same’.

I just want to talk about glass bins, because also having a separate bin for glass actually vastly improves what we can do with the glass. We do not want to get it contaminated with other recyclables in the bin, because it breaks and becomes embedded in plastic and paper, making them harder to recycle and of a lower value. You would be interested to know on Back Roads just the other day on the ABC with Heather Ewart she was on French Island, which is in the electorate of Hastings. It was great to see the community there. They have been living sustainably for years and years and off the grid, and they have banded together and got a community glass crusher instead of putting all their glass onto the barge to take over to the mainland. It becomes sand, and that does not cut you when you run your fingers through it, and it is used for building materials, driveways et cetera.

This scheme will definitely positively impact the types and volumes of waste that we put into our kerbside bins. We are constantly working with industry to promote investment and innovation when it comes to recycling, and this bill reflects those efforts. By 2030, as I said, all across Victoria no matter where they live, every household will have access to the four separate waste stream services: food and organics, glass, commingled recycling and residual waste. And you know what? Four bins is not that much. I was in Italy in 2018 in a little village—800 people. Over 14 days you would be putting bins out on 13 of those days—small bins, because you cannot have big trucks in those village streets—and everyone has got a handle on what to do. Italy actually had a national strategy for organics, given the Mediterranean and the risk of drought, which we are seeing now. So I call on our new federal government to also look at a national strategy around organics. Anyway, I will not go on about Italy. But for most households—

A member interjected.

Ms CRUGNALE: Do you want me to go on about Italy for a bit longer? Well, I have only got 38 seconds. But they had in the village of Alfedena in Abruzzo these ecological islands, so if you missed your bin day—which could happen for someone that was not across all the different systems—you could go to two stations in the village, and you had your organics, your glass, your metals and plastics and the other bins. So there is a lot we can do in this space. I think we need a national strategy.

This is an amazing bill. I am literally going to run out of time, but I want to thank the Minister for Environment and Climate Action and the department and all her team for the amazing amount of work that has gone into this bill. I commend it.

Dr READ (Brunswick) (15:49): I would have liked to have heard more from the member for Bass Coast about the Abruzzese waste management system. But here in Victoria our landfills are filling up. Every year our households and businesses generate millions of tonnes of waste, and truckload by truckload our landfills get closer to full. This is not an easy problem to solve. It involves major changes to the way we produce, consume and recycle products—in other words, a shift to a circular economy. A circular economy involves materials moving in a circle, from producers to consumers and back, in cycles of re-use and recycling. But waste companies have somehow slipped a very linear solution into the conversation: burn our rubbish, generate a little bit of energy, release toxic pollution into the atmosphere and bury the toxic waste left over in a hole in the ground. Labor have also slipped this very linear solution into their circular economy bill by making a large section of this bill about incineration.

Incinerators, or ‘thermal waste-to-energy projects’, as they are more politely called, claim to be an easy solution to our overflowing landfills. But is setting fire to our problems the best way to solve them? Incinerators undermine the circular economy—and not just by burning materials instead of re-using them. Large incinerators are so damn expensive to build that they need a dedicated waste supply for decades to come. We have seen this in the advanced waste proposal from the south-eastern councils, which brought together councils to contract a new advanced facility for their waste, very likely involving incineration. In order to be economically viable the project wanted councils to commit to guaranteeing a steady supply of rubbish for 25 years. I would like to think that we will be better at recycling in 25 years, in 2047, but when councils sign up to major waste-to-energy projects they need their residents to be putting just as much waste into their red-lid bins in 2047 as they do in 2022. They lose all incentive to get better at recycling. Many councils have pulled out of the advanced waste proposal, but the Labor government is yet to pull out of establishing an incineration sector. The Labor government knows that incineration can cannibalise recycling—in fact the then Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change said so in her second-reading speech, that there is:

… clear evidence in parts of Europe that over-commitment of waste into thermal waste-to-energy facilities has undermined efforts to recycle materials.

The minister recognises the problem, and this bill attempts to address it by putting a cap on how much incinerators can burn in any one year. And then the bill undermines itself by setting the cap too high at 1 million tonnes and then exempting projects which could burn a further 600 000 tonnes. This bill could see 1.6 million tonnes of rubbish burnt in Victoria every year. Let us put that in perspective: that is more than all of the landfill waste collected from all of the household wheelie bins in Victoria in a year. And while incineration projects would also burn non-residential waste when they can get it, this cap could see all of our household waste burnt. It could see incinerator projects competing with each other to access our waste, pressuring governments to not reduce waste by getting better at recycling.

What could 2047 look like without major incineration projects? We should have food-waste collection across the state operational long before then, roughly halving how much we put in our landfill bins. Maybe by 2047 truly compostable packaging will be a common thing. Maybe we will have banned more single-use plastic, so things like disposable coffee cups and all those plastic trays and plastic wrap on our fruit and veg will not be in our bins in the first place. Maybe we will have finally got soft-plastics recycling sorted so that the bags and packaging currently in our landfill bins will have moved across to the recycling bin. Maybe the textile industry will be better regulated so we do not buy cheap clothes which are badly made by badly paid workers and end up in the bin because they fall apart. Maybe the clothing that does fall apart will be recycled into padding for furniture and insulation. Maybe we will have got smarter in how we do packaging so it is no longer a plastic packet inside a plastic packet padded with polystyrene inside a box. The Greens believe we can do this and a hell of a lot sooner than 2047. But why would you when you have got a contractual obligation to make sure we generate enough rubbish to burn? Besides undermining the circular economy, incinerator proposals usually face major campaigns from the local community. Who wants to live next to a source of toxic air pollution? In parts of Europe incinerators are the leading source of dioxins, pollutants which just do not go away but accumulate in the food chain. While we are told that Victoria’s incinerators will manage their emissions, the reality is that Australia’s existing air pollution standards are very low and just not enforced.

I also want to take this opportunity to ask the government to hold the line on excluding the burning of native forests from the definition of ‘renewable energy’ and to ensure that no public funds are going to biomass projects that will use native forest timber. There is growing pressure around Australia and the world to generate energy from biomass in waste-to-energy projects that will feed off Australia’s and the world’s forests. It was concerning to hear the Alinta Energy CEO say recently that he will be looking at biomass options to replace the brown coal burnt at Loy Yang B in the Latrobe Valley and visiting Europe to consider options. Unfortunately Europe still allows the burning of wood pellets made from forests logged around the world to count as renewable energy. Such a proposal here would be a disaster for forests around the world and increase pressure on future governments to continue the destruction of our beautiful native forests. It is clearly unnecessary as we can generate enough renewable energy from solar, wind and other resources not reliant on burning forests.

The Greens support other aspects of the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022, but we will be moving a reasoned amendment to protect the circular economy in the title. I move:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘this bill be withdrawn and redrafted to truly protect the circular economy by investigating reductions in waste such as banning large-scale incineration projects, and boosts to recycling’.

The Greens do not want the circular economy or our plastics to go up in smoke.

Mr FOWLES (Burwood) (15:57): Member for Brunswick, you are killing me, brother. It is an environmental bill. Is 20 minutes too much? I am delighted to follow the Greens in speaking on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. I thought the Greens party might have acquitted the full 20 minutes on offer on this one, but it was not to be—a result of which, in any event, is that I cannot wait to find out what I am about to say.

There are a few preliminary matters I want to address—not so much what my friend the member for Brunswick put to the chamber in his short contribution but in fact what was put by members of the opposition. The first I have to confess some confusion around. I had to double-check the bill to make sure I understood it right. The member for Brighton, who is at the table, suggested more than once, I think, that this bill creates a start date for a bureaucracy. Now, I had another look at the bill, and the only bureaucracy I could see referenced there was Recycling Victoria. I remain confused because Recycling Victoria has already started. It started in 2021. It has been going for 13 months. So I am a bit perplexed as to why that was the key thesis of the member for Brighton’s contribution.

In addition to that, the Leader of The Nationals said that there should be money for councils. We agree. That is why we have given $129 million to assist councils in the transition not just to the new recycling standards but also to the all-important four-bin system. We appreciate that that, for some councils, is a significant transition. That is why significant state resources have been made available to them to assist with this transition.

Finally, the member for Caulfield suggested that somehow this bill, or the government perhaps, was not encouraging innovation. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Sustainability Victoria has made available over $100 million in grants, and that has unlocked $314 million in both private sector and local council investment in projects that are all about innovation and development. Indeed when you look at the aggregate of that, nearly $420 million, that is a very, very large amount of money targeted at innovation and development in this sector.

We know this is a sector that has undergone significant change. We know that frankly in, I suspect, all of our lifetimes, perhaps with the exception of the member for Nepean, we have probably started life with just a trash can that went to landfill, and over the course of all of our lives, again with the exception of the member for Nepean, we have seen the evolution of this space to introducing recycling and now green waste and the evolution again into food organics and green organics. And we expect we will see more of it. We expect we will see more people composting at home. We expect we will see councils having a really close look at their programs to make sure that people are strongly encouraged to first reduce, then re-use and then recycle, and only after that should waste to energy be contemplated. This innovation that we have funded has led to nearly 1 million tonnes of new waste and recovery capacity. That process will continue to develop. There will be more of that over time, and I think that frankly the government ought to be applauded for that, not, as it was in the member for Caulfield’s submission, derided for not encouraging innovation. In fact nothing could be further from the truth.

To, I guess, my more substantive comments now, there was an establishment bill last year, enacting the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021, which established Recycling Victoria, which, again, I think the member for Brighton thinks is established by this bill—and it is not. The establishment of Recycling Victoria was to ensure that we had a statewide entity that had purview over the totality of the stewardship, regulatory and market oversight functions and oversight, importantly, of Victoria’s container deposit scheme. The history of some of these developments is reasonably problematic, including the collapse of SKM Recycling and then changes in Chinese policy to ban the import of most plastics and other recycling material. We were most definitely in a situation where we were kind of exporting our problems in relation to many of these things, but what the government has done is step up and make sure that we are building domestic capacity, domestic solutions, domestic innovation and domestic capabilities to make sure that we are addressing as many of these problems as can possibly be addressed here right at home. In Victoria I think we have the very proud record of continuing that cycle of innovation to make sure that we are providing nation-leading solutions to all the very many challenges that attach to waste, be it domestic, commercial or industrial.

The bill provides for new powers and functions for the head of Recycling Victoria, and they are very important. It gives that person the regulatory oversight of this thermal waste-to-energy scheme. I have heard what the member for Brunswick has said about this, but I think we are talking about a waste-to-energy scheme that is effectively a scheme of last resort. We understand—perhaps others on the member for Brunswick’s side of the chamber do not—that waste to energy is better than landfill but only just, and it ought to be the third consideration. We must always first seek to reduce, then seek to re-use, then to recycle and only then—then and only then—to contemplate waste-to-energy schemes.

In addition to waste to energy and monitoring the annual cap on that, the responsibilities of the head of Recycling Victoria will include preparing a new Victorian recycling infrastructure plan to take oversight of a risk, consequence and contingency planning framework—that is a very detailed analysis of the risks and consequences of waste, recycling and resource recovery—and preparing a new annual market report to provide an overview of what is happening in Victoria’s circular economy, including of course identifying any emerging issues. We know that this is a sector that has been prone to malpractice and profiteering. We know that it is a sector that warrants a dedicated regulator. We know that it is a sector that will benefit from the very significant investments the government is making in innovation but also in supporting local councils to diversify waste streams and to maximise the amount of reduction, re-use and recycling that is occurring out there in the marketplace.

There is a little tidy-up clause in this bill relating to diverted material. This is making sure that charity shops, op shops, tip shops and the like are correctly carved out. There is a bit of a tidy up here. There was an inconsistency of definitions; that is a more technical part of this bill. But really at the guts of the bill is this waste-to-energy scheme and there are definitions in the bill around permitted waste. We understand that waste to energy is an imperfect solution, that the other things that I have outlined ought always to be prioritised, and we are conscious too of the carbon emissions that attach to waste-to-energy programs. But to the extent that it can be managed safely and without the release of other pollutants, I think there is a place for waste to energy.

What we do not want to see, though, in Australia is a dramatic overinvestment that then relies on us importing waste from elsewhere to keep the waste-to-energy facilities rolling on. We saw a massive overcapitalisation in Norway. We do not want to see that replicated here, and that is why it is not a pure market mechanism. It is not purely market led because we have seen market failure in exactly this sector in other jurisdictions. What we hope is to see in this jurisdiction the establishment, yes, of a waste-to-energy space in the overall circular economy but not to see that becoming a massive feature of the circular economy and most importantly not to see it become a hungry beast that needs to continue to be fed in order to continue to operate. We want to make sure that the other three goals and priorities—reduction, re-use and recycling—are prioritised. We also will make sure that only truly residual waste is utilised for that waste to energy. We do not want to see other streams diverted into it for other reasons—of ease or of cost. I have strayed well wide of where I intended to go when I set out. Time is against me, but I do commend this bill to the house.

Ms CONNOLLY (Tarneit) (16:07): It gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise and speak on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. It feels like just another sitting week in which we are here in this place debating a bill about the environment or about energy. I pay particular attention to this because I spent 13 years of my career in the energy sector, and it would have been for a good 11 or 12 of those years that almost on a daily basis the total inertia of a Liberal federal government was part of the conversation for people working in the energy sector about the lack of policy, the lack of having a framework and the lack of having a vision to take us forward and encourage investment across this country.

I thought it was a little bit like comedy hour, actually, listening to the member for Brighton talk about this bill and talk about this government needing a rocket put under it to start doing things when it comes to the environment and climate change. It was an absolutely hilarious comment from a man who has spent a lifetime being part of a party which has done everything possible not to take any action on climate change—to do absolutely nothing in this country when it comes to climate change and protecting our environment. We have seen overwhelmingly in areas like the neighbourhood that he calls home people going to the polling booths and voting for action on climate change and doing something about the environment.

It was not too long ago that we were here in this place debating the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Bill 2021. I have to say that the Minister for Environment and Climate Action should be absolutely commended for having an office that is hardworking and 200 per cent committed to drafting legislation and getting on with that legislative reform agenda that we need time and time again to move us forward when it comes to tackling climate change and making a positive impact on all Victorians and our environment. Since we debated the first circular economy bill, we have seen a major overhaul of the way that Victorians dispose of and recycle waste. I do not know about other members of this place, but I have taken the time to go and do a tour of a lot of recycling industries that are there in Laverton North in the Tarneit electorate. I have also gone and checked out and had a tour—a drive around—of Werribee tip. There is nothing quite like bringing someone back to reality by going to your local tip and seeing what happens and what would happen if we did not put mechanisms in place to encourage and incentivise folks to go ahead and recycle. The benefits of the way in which Victorians dispose of and recycle waste, the plan that we have, cannot be understated—$6.7 billion of our state’s economy by 2030, an additional 4000 jobs and diverting at least 80 per cent of our waste from landfill, all of which will be supported by this new body that we are talking about today as part of this bill.

When the previous bill was passed last year, we set up Recycling Victoria, the body that will, as the name sure does suggest, be overseeing recycling and waste management activities in Victoria. It merges several waste and resource recovery groups across Victoria into that one body that is going to facilitate the rollout of our circular economy, one where waste is disposed of appropriately and recycled back into re-usable materials. Now, I note that they started up and got running just last month, and this of course was precipitated by the challenges posed early on in this term of government with the collapse of SKM and China’s National Sword policy implementation, which had major impacts on our capacity to dispose of waste. But with those challenges comes opportunity, and it is really important to have a government that will look at that opportunity, back it in and rise to the challenge.

In 2019 we announced that all Victorian councils would be supported towards phasing our rubbish collection to a four-bin system which will help Victorian households sort through their rubbish more efficiently, which makes it easier for waste disposal and recyclers to prevent much recyclable material from ending up in landfills. I have gone and visited a couple of these industries—Alex Fraser, to name one—and it is absolutely incredible to see how rubbish is unloaded onto what feels like a travelator, and the rubbish is picked through, sometimes manually, by workers and folks in my electorate. Quite often it can just be one piece of glass that can disrupt, for example, the recycling of paper. The glass has a dreadful impact on paper and being able to turn it into the paper that I have got my speech written on today. It is amazing to see what this looks like at the coalface and see it firsthand, because then you truly do realise it is so important. Recycling Victoria has an incredibly important role. What this bill will do is build upon the foundations set in the last bill and deliver the next tranche of reforms to make our circular economy a reality.

I have to say I thought it ridiculously hilarious when I heard the member for Brighton—and I have to say there was a pause in the member for Brighton’s contribution earlier today because he paused to reflect on nine years of a federal Liberal government, the behaviour of their party and the lack of action that they took. I think he paused to reflect that putting forward the words and the contention that the opposition is leading when it comes to a recycling policy was absolutely ridiculous. I say this because the opposition’s recycling policy is not actually a policy. While we have been working tirelessly on this side of the house to deliver real change to the recycling sector, those opposite simply want to bring in more incinerators all across our state. That is what they want to do—they want to burn everything. I bet where they would be setting up those incinerators would not be in the local streets and the local neighbourhood that the member for Brighton calls home. But we get to expect that from the opposition and the Liberal Party. They tend to want to burn everything—an incinerator in every backyard.

Waste to energy does have a role to play when it comes to materials that cannot be recycled, but it is not the only solution. The government has put its money where its mouth is because it is not putting all of its eggs in one basket. We have seen what that looks like with countries like Denmark relying on waste from overseas to incinerate. Our system is one that is environmentally sustainable, and do you know what else? Our community benefits. I can certainly say mine has, as over 190 million recycled glass bottles were used for the $1.8 billion western roads upgrade program that ran right through my electorate, which has directly benefited my community in the Tarneit electorate. Six major roads that run through the heart of my electorate were duplicated and resurfaced using state-of-the-art recycling technology just in our local backyard in Laverton North. In Laverton North we have a major glass recycler called Alex Fraser. I went there with the Minister for Environment and Climate Action in 2019, and they are doing amazing work re-using these materials to facilitate our Big Build in a way that is sustainable. This is something my community feel extremely proud of. They love knowing that the roads they are driving down are made from recycled products turned into re-usable materials to lay down western roads—the roads they are driving on.

This is a really important bill. It is absolutely appalling that those on the other side of the chamber would even try to say that their party has a policy that supersedes ours. They had nine years in that place called Canberra, nine years as a federal Liberal government, in which they did absolutely nothing. This is a great bill, and I commend it to the house.

Mr EDBROOKE (Frankston) (16:17:477:): I am very excited to stand up in this house today and speak in regard to the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. We have previously heard from some very passionate speakers on the government side of the house. They have told us that this Victorian government is thoroughly committed to legislating a statewide circular economy, which we have been in no doubt about for many years now. There has been a huge consultation process on this as well. This system generates jobs and it meets climate change targets, which by their nature are quite aspirational, and we believe they are obviously reachable or else we would not have made them. But there are some people that would like to see us change those targets. There are some people that would like to see us change those targets to increase coal-fired production of energy, and there are others on the Greens side of the bench that would like to see us in a state of flux where when we turn the switch on there is no power. But of course this government has a plan to ensure that all Victorians have a reliable energy source and a reliable recycling system, because our recycling system plays a vital function and a vital role in the livability of our cities and regions.

I cannot help but stand here and have a bit of a chuckle at some of the things I have heard, especially from the member for Brighton. With respect, I would have to disagree on the record and the culture of the opposition when it comes to renewables, recycling or even the environment. It is a bit hard to stand here and hear some of this revisionist history which has never actually taken place. It is all about making a strategy for the election. I stand here having only just read an article stating that there will be a teal candidate, who has just come out in the local media, and she is going to be running in Caulfield this time around. No doubt we will see in this house the member for Caulfield and some other members come up with all manner of environmental policy on the run to ensure that they can safeguard themselves, or try to safeguard themselves, against a teal opponent that would be very much focused, if the federal election is anything to go by, on climate change, renewable energy and equality in politics and in life. So this could be very, very interesting.

To be here today and witness what we did with the opposition lead speaker says to me a couple of things. The first one is that the opposition have in no way taken into account a bloke I guess you could call the doyen of corporate culture. His name is Peter Drucker. He always said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. You can consider that this side of the house, the government side of the house, has always had a culture of reflecting what our community across Victoria needs. What they are saying to us in regard to the environment, and that is a very, very strong message down on the peninsula, I can tell you, is that we need to make that transition to renewables. We need to embrace wind energy and solar energy, which this government has done, to the point where we are leading the nation on that.

But across the decks there they have got just a strategy, and that strategy has not changed since even 2014. Back then I was shocked as a candidate to see that we had no Liberal candidate even coming to the environmental forums that our community constructed and made for us. There were several times when I was standing up there alone with the Greens candidate, and it seemed like there was no care about these kinds of things and no thought given. In fact, as the member for Yan Yean said, the first time I did see some policy from the Liberal Party was with the Liberal candidate who ran for Frankston in 2018. This was a very interesting time. There was a lot of pressure I think at the pre-poll doors from people saying, ‘Well, what is your policy? We know Labor’s policy. They’re leading the nation. We know the Greens policy, their aspirations. But what about you?’.

So it came to a time where we had a Sky News interview. I went up to the arts centre in Frankston and did my piece: ‘Yes, we’re going to set targets’ or ‘We’ve set targets to cut Victoria’s emissions by up to 33 per cent by 2005 and up to 50 per cent by 2030 based on the 2005 levels’. It was with David Speers, a very, very calculated and proficient interviewer I would say, and afterwards I went back down to pre-poll. It was then that my phone just exploded with phone calls, and I was thinking, ‘Oh, jeez, what have I said? I’ve put my foot in it here’. The members over there are smiling because they have all done it; they know that feeling. Unfortunately for the Liberal candidate—oof!—it did not go well. I am going to read out what actually happened because it does provide us some insight into the confusion on anything related to the environment, climate change or renewable energy with the opposition. It is a little bit incoherent, but just go with me on this. Michael Lamb was interviewed by David Speers, and it was on Sky News. Speers said:

… there’d be a new power station paid for by the … state?

And Lamb said:

By the private sector, yep.

Speers said:

Oh, by the private sector …

and he looked a bit puzzled. Then Lamb said:

We’ll tender … whatever the market decides, we’ll tender out.

And Speers said:

They can do that already, can’t they?

And Lamb said:

Who’s that?

And David said:

The private sector can build a power station if they want …

because David knows that the private sector were actually in front of the federal government in making that transition out of coal, because it was not feasible and there was too much risk involved. But Lamb, the candidate, said:

Well, they haven’t been allowed to under this government.

And Speers, again in confusion, said:

Haven’t been allowed to …

Lamb said:

Build a … power station.

Speers said:

Well, there are all sorts of renewables and wind power. What are you saying?

Lamb said:

Well, whatever is the most reliable and affordable—the market will determine that.

Speers said:

But that’s what I’m saying. The market determines that every day, don’t they? What are you saying you’d do differently?

And Lamb said:

Well, the tender process will be building a power station.

And Speers repeated:

A tender process for what? For the government?

And Lamb said:

For the lowest base power, yes.

And—bear with me here—Speers said:

So … the taxpayer would fund …

And Lamb said:

No, no, it’s private industry.

Speers said:

But they can do that already.

Lamb repeated:

Well, they haven’t …

Speers said:

What would the government do?

Lamb said:

We’ll allow them to do it.

Speers summed up with:

But with their own money?

Lamb said:

Yes.

It is what it is, I guess, and it is one of those interviews where I think they are probably using it, unfortunately, in media training and things like that—that if you do not know what you are talking about, you should probably shut up and appear stupid rather than speaking up and removing all doubt. Now, I am not making a personal reflection on Michael there, because I did get along with Michael on the pre-polls and everything, and I have the utmost respect for him, but certainly it shows the incoherent nature of the Liberal Party policy on anything environmental.

Our record, obviously across the last few years, is one that has ensured that Victoria is now leading the nation in renewables, in targets, and now in the circular economy. It is something that certainly in my part of the world, on the peninsula, is basically seen as the translation from what people are asking us, whether they be high school students, secondary college students or even primary school students in the Frankston area and on the peninsula. They are saying, ‘This is the policy we need’, and we are providing that policy and obviously asking the experts what they think should be done as well. But in reality it is one and the same. We are being asked to make sure we do our bit with the environment, and this is part of doing it.

I will be proud to stand up in my community and say it is the Andrews Labor government that is getting on with ensuring that the circular economy is rolled out. It is something very, very important especially down in those beach areas. Obviously this comes with the precursor of the Climate Change Act 2017, which was also an Andrews Labor government initiative, and we have made it our goal to achieve those net zero emissions by 2050. We were one of the first jurisdictions to do that, so we are leading the nation in so many ways. We are leading the nation in the circular economy rollout as well, and I commend this bill to the house.

Mr ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (16:27): I also rise to address the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. As previous speakers on this side of the Parliament have pointed out the purpose of this bill is interrelated reforms to the circular economy. These reforms include infrastructure planning, risk and contingency planning and improved market reporting. The bill makes amendments to the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021, the Environment Protection Act 2017 and the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005. The amendments to the circular economy act are as follows: to provide the legislative framework for Recycling Victoria’s functions and establish a cap on thermal waste-to-energy capacity in Victoria. The amendments to the Environment Protection Act include providing funding for Recycling Victoria through the waste levy trust account and a number of administrative amendments as well. The amendments to the Sustainability Victoria Act include enabling information sharing by Sustainability Victoria to carry out its functions to work with Recycling Victoria and the Environment Protection Authority.

I note that the Greens member for Brunswick has moved a reasoned amendment, stating:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘this bill be withdrawn and redrafted to truly protect the circular economy by investigating reductions in waste such as banning large-scale incineration projects, and boosts to recycling’.

Wowee. Righto. As a number of members have pointed out, the Greens—and I have a great personal regard for the member for Brunswick. Too bad he is a member of that particular party, representing their views in this place. That is just mad. That is absolute madness. By ‘large-scale incineration projects’ I assume that the member for Brunswick is referring to zero-to-landfill waste-to-energy projects that have been signalled by the Liberals. A short time ago when I served in the shadow cabinet in a different capacity I had a few people come to me suggesting that the waste-to-energy projects were actually bad for the environment and we could be doing better on a number of fronts. I went away and I did a bit of research on that. I am sorry to say I do not have the numbers in front of me now, but the options for waste in the future in Victoria are as follows. Our landfills are filling up. They are filling up quite rapidly. So as custodians of our community, as custodians of our environment, when you have got landfill filling up quite quickly, you are presented with a couple of choices: you either dig new holes in God’s green earth and deal with your waste in that way; or you take responsibility for your waste and deal with it in other ways.

Again, I do not have the numbers in front of me, but there is a much greater environmental benefit from in fact treating waste through a waste-to-energy process than from leaving it to sit in stinking piles and in new holes that will need to be dug for it. So that is why the Liberals for some time have suggested that this waste-to-energy process is a good process. We committed $120 million over four years from the state’s Sustainability Fund to create that zero to landfill fund, and that fund would have a recycling futures stream to help upgrade recycling facilities and an energy-from-waste stream to deliver energy from waste projects in Victoria. Wouldn’t it be marvellous, Acting Speaker Blackwood, if some of those energy-from-waste facilities were based in your part of the world, in the Latrobe Valley? It would make sense. There is established transmission infrastructure in your part of the world, Acting Speaker, which shortly, in the coming decades, will not have a use from traditional forms of energy creation, and it would be a shame for that infrastructure not to be used in an alternative way.

Of course thematically the purpose of this bill, as I understand from the government, is to better protect our environment and to leave the environment for the next generation in a better state than we currently have it. In my local community I am deeply committed to our local environment. I was born at the Sandringham Hospital some 36 years ago. I have lived in my community. I grew up in Beaumaris. I now live in Sandringham with my family. Our area is defined by the magnificent coastline, by the tree-lined streets and by the parks and nature reserves that we have. That is the neighbourhood character of our area, and I feel a happy obligation to do everything I can to preserve our natural environment locally for this generation and for the next.

One of the most magnificent parts of our area is the Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary in Beaumaris. This beautiful part of Port Phillip Bay was declared a marine sanctuary some 20 years ago. This year is the 20th anniversary for that marine sanctuary being declared as such, and so just last Saturday it was wonderful to be there with my colleague the member for Brighton, the Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change, to announce that a future Liberal government would better protect our Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary—preserve it and protect it for this generation and the next. There are a number of elements to the announcement of that commitment: to replace existing signage with new clearer signage at boat ramps and Ricketts Point to identify the boundaries of the marine sanctuary; to install surveillance cameras on the buoys that mark the marine sanctuary boundary; to improve education for fishers about the importance of marine sanctuaries through the licensing process; and to direct the Victorian Fisheries Authority to conduct more frequent patrols around the marine sanctuary boundary as well.

This work is essential. It is critical. I can remember as a young boy, together with my twin brother, growing up in Beaumaris and going down to the marine sanctuary to beautiful Port Phillip, exploring the rock pools and playing in the shallow waters down there. And now I have the great privilege and opportunity to do the same but with my own children. That is why this is so important to me. It is one thing to speak about the protection and the preservation of our environment, and I genuinely think that the vast majority of members in this place are deeply committed to doing that. But what I am trying to do as a local member, being a local champion for my community, is not just talk about that in the abstract, is not just talk about that through things that are not really tangible to members of my community. I want that demonstrated through tangible local environmental outcomes that I know will have the greatest impact on my community, and that is why I was thrilled to make that announcement for the better protection of our Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary just on Saturday.

Of course there are a number of other things that I am working on locally in this space. I am deeply concerned by the loss of open space. The government has a stated intent to develop the vast majority of the gas and fuel land on Nepean Highway, Highett—6.3 hectares of land there—leaving only 11 per cent of that for open space. Couple that with the proposed Suburban Rail Loop development at the Sir William Fry Reserve—a beautiful open space as it currently is, a natural amphitheatre there for concerts, carols by candlelight and other community events—and under the government’s plan for the Suburban Rail Loop more than 40 per cent of that open space will be removed. That comes with consequences. We are saying we want to increase our population locally through Cheltenham and through Highett, but you cannot increase your population in a community like mine if you do not maintain open space, parkland, recreation areas and sporting fields for the increased population. It just makes sense to do so.

Another commitment that I made on the weekend was the removal of the Highett Road and Wickham Road level crossing, because Bayside council only recently approved some 1100 dwellings just a stone’s throw from that level crossing. So as our community changes I am not opposed to change, but it must be appropriate change together with genuine consultation with our community, and we must not consider these projects as separate, isolated projects but the effect that they cumulatively have on our community as a whole. I am grateful for the opportunity to address this bill. As I said, the stated intent of this bill is to do the best that we can for our environment. I know this side of the house is also committed to doing just that.

Mr TAYLOR (Bayswater) (16:37): It is a great pleasure and a privilege to rise to talk in support of the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022 and of course a great privilege to not just be in this Parliament as a member of the Andrews Labor government but proactively support its agenda. I am very proud to be part of a government that leads the nation and indeed arguably the globe in terms of its progressive reform agenda when it comes to the environment, when it comes to its emissions reduction targets, when it comes to renewables and when it comes to its huge recycling reforms, whether they be technical or indeed the significant piece of legislation we are seeing here today to support that sector, create clean and green jobs and pave the way for Victoria and indeed for the rest of the nation. I am very happy for others to follow in our footsteps.

It has been fantastic to hear from members on that side/this side talking in support of this bill. I note the member for Frankston’s comments, and one of the greatest learnings I got out of that—not that anyone is going to come and chat to me anytime soon from those particular areas—is not to talk to Sky News and to avoid David Speers, because he will get you, as some others learnt the very hard way in 2018. But it was fantastic to hear from the member for Frankston and his passion not just for this legislation but for his local environment and community.

I was listening to the member for Bentleigh’s contribution today, and as part of my contribution a little bit later I want to go one of my favourite points he raised: some of those opposite—well, just to my right, adjacent, really, in my case; I have not been over there, so we will say adjacent, but for all intents and purposes those opposite—getting their selfie on World Environment Day yet voting down every significant piece of environmental legislation in the last 3½ years. It is great—no, actually it is quite sad. However, I will say that it is nice to see, even if it is somewhat perhaps being pushed. Some are perhaps more enthusiastic because of people like Zoe Daniels and of course the rest of the teal movement. They are now starting to talk a bit more. Maybe it will not just be a selfie; maybe it will be some real policy changes. However, we will wait and see. They still have not supported a significant piece of environmental legislation, but we will see. I wait with bated breath.

But of course we are here to talk about the environment legislation amendment bill 2022. We do know that this bill will amend Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021 to provide Recycling Victoria with additional powers and functions—critically important—will amend the Environment Protection Act 2017 to allow Recycling Victoria to be funded by the waste levy and make other improvements to better effect the act’s intent and operation and will amend the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005 to support information sharing by Sustainability Victoria.

We know that the circular economy act 2021 forms a central part of this government’s once-in-a-generation reform of Victoria’s waste and recycling system to make it more effective, to make it more accountable and importantly to make it consistent with community expectations. This bill delivers additional reforms to the circular economy act as well as the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005 and the other one. I am just going to start saying ‘the other acts’—there are so many of them. This is just game-changing stuff here. There are so many acts, so many pieces of legislation. We are getting on with it.

It will support our state’s transition to a circular economy. We have invested an unprecedented $515 million to deliver this transition, and it will support the creation of more than 3900 jobs—nearly 4000 jobs. It will deliver on our climate change targets and ensure Victorians have a recycling system they can rely on. This is a little Easter egg I was going to run through later, but I will run through it now. I am very proud to be part of a government that does not take a backwards step and is not on the back foot when it comes to our environment, when it comes to climate change and when it comes to recycling. This government at the last election said it would put over 700 000 solar panels on roofs. We are well underway with that landmark reform. In fact other states are copying. It is great to see—it is the best form of flattery—and that is putting money back into people’s pockets. That is good for the environment. It is good for jobs.

That is making a significant difference right across this state and indeed in my electorate of Bayswater—a beautiful electorate. Of course now, with the redefined boundaries, it is entirely Knox. We love Knox, the leafy green suburbs. I hear from others about open space and sport and the need to invest. It is like, ‘Where have you been for the last 7½ years, brother? Where have you been?’. There has never been greater investment in our sports, in making sure we encourage and foster the growth of female participation in sports—backing in investment in open space. I mean, there are those fantastic sky rail projects down there. Look at the oodles of open space, the open space commitments for the North East Link and all of the open space commitments right across the state—not just metro, regional; in every single state seat it is happening. So when some say, ‘Open space and sports’, well, show me the money. This government has shown this state the money when it comes to investing in open space, investing in the local environment.

I tell you what, this government as well has done a great deal of work. We have enshrined a ban on fracking in our constitution. We are getting on with the container deposit scheme. We are committing hundreds of millions of dollars to invest and transform our recycling sector. Of course some of that conversation is in this debate. We are banning single-use plastics within Victoria. We are getting on with our job. We have unveiled an ambitious climate change strategy and interim targets. We have positioned Victoria as a leader in tackling climate change, that much is absolutely clear.

I did allude before to what the member for Bentleigh said about getting the selfies but perhaps there being not so much actual commitment to doing tangible things. As we know, in the last few years—let us have a look—the Liberals have voted against every one of the government’s climate change bills, including the Climate Change Bill 2016, the Renewable Energy (Jobs and Investment) Bill 2017, the Renewable Energy (Jobs and Investment) Amendment Bill 2019, the Energy Legislation Amendment (Licence Conditions) Bill 2020 and the Energy Legislation Amendment (Energy Fairness) Bill 2021. So some in this place perhaps are now finding their feet and trying to convince their communities that the culture wars have ended on climate change and the environment and that: ‘We’ve scrapped political ideology. This is not about the Liberals, this is not about Labor; this is about the environment’. Well, I say this is not just about showing me the money when it comes to open space and investing in sport—show me the policy, show me the commitment and show me the drive, and then we will let Victoria decide. We will let Victorians decide, and they can work out who was committed to tackling climate change, who was committed to investing in and transforming our recycling system, who was invested in and who was committed to creating the circular economy—not just empty platitudes. Let us get rid of the culture wars, let us get rid of all the political ideology, let us get on with tackling an issue that I think was well and truly decided at the most recent federal election.

One would perhaps think that maybe it is great that others and some in politics keep banging on about the same stuff because maybe that has an electoral benefit for others as well, but I think it is much more important than that. I really hope that those who are yet to be convinced are convinced, because the only planet we have really counts on them getting behind it. Whether it is Victoria, across the state or across the nation, we all have a role to play here, and this legislation is but one small part, one little cog in the wheel to make sure that we back in the environment and that we support the transition to clean energy, backing in and transforming our recycling system, moving to the circular economy. It is all critically important stuff.

Locally we announced the single biggest local environmental project in Knox’s history, which will reimagine Blind Creek and Lewis Park and in turn create the green heart of Knox. It will span three suburbs, it is that big. The magnitude of what we have just announced very recently cannot be overstated. This project will restore 1.65 kilometres of a section of Blind Creek to the surface. It will return our waterways back to the community to connect with and enjoy, and it will improve the health of local waterways and create tons more local space—33 hectares, or in the Melbourne measurement, 17 MCGs. It will also mean the creation of three new wetlands, over 6 kilometres of new walking paths, nearly 700 000 new plants, improved waterway quality, more flood storage and harvesting lots of water for use. Nearly 2000 trees were planted, and there will be a boardwalk through the new wetlands system at Lewis Park, lots of community infrastructure to engage with and reimagined space, such as stepping stones and benches. And of course it is going to create lots of good jobs. This will create hands down the most exciting and significant environmental space for tens of thousands of Knox residents to enjoy for years to come—Lewis Park, reimagining Blind Creek. It is all happening. I absolutely support this bill, and I encourage others to do so as well.

Ms SHEED (Shepparton) (16:48): Thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. While I cannot deign to speak with the passion of the member for Bayswater, I certainly support the notion of recycling, and I think we have all been on that pathway for a very long time. That whole concept of the circular economy just has such a fantastic sound to it in a way—that notion of everything going around rather than constantly going into landfill. While I am diverging from my speech, I have to tell you that on Sunday I had occasion to make a trip to our local transfer station in Shepparton to unload a trailer of rubbish, and it is truly shocking to go to a place like that and see the amount of rubbish that we are just disposing of and trying to dispose of in creative ways but not being successful enough at doing it.

I think it is important to look at the ways in which people and governments can deal with waste, and this bill introduces a thermal waste-to-energy scheme to ensure that waste that would otherwise go to landfill is used to create energy—and if that is not circular, I do not know what is. It is in addition to increasing the capacity for recycling in the state and recycling larger quantities of materials as we go forward. So the aim is for grand-scale recycling, and it is something that is desperately needed. As I said, that trip to the tip really made me consider just how important it is, because we cannot keep pouring it into other places. Dare I say, nor can we, as we used to do, send it to other countries. It is just simply untenable to think that we would export our waste to other countries, and often to Third World countries. I recall seeing a documentary where it was shown that waste was being sent to Indonesia, plastic waste, and that it was being burnt just in open fires and incinerators, and it was no doubt very toxic for the people who were engaged in that process. So it is incumbent on us as a community to find ways to deal with waste that do not create a burden first of all for those in other countries but also for generations to come. I think a bill like this really draws our attention to the capacity we truly have to put our minds to ways of dealing with it.

I just want to tell you a bit more about Shepparton besides the local tip. Shepparton is the second-largest dairy production region in Australia. We process almost a quarter of Australia’s milk and almost half of Victoria’s fruit. We are also one of the largest freight and logistics hubs in regional Australia and home to more than 25 per cent of Victoria’s registered heavy vehicles. Our local industries need energy, and they are crying out for ways to be able to get access to the energy they need but also bring down the cost that is associated with it. Certainly thinking of some of the businesses that I know well that are relying on gas at the moment for energy, they are looking over the fence and thinking about other ways they might be able to harness waste within the community that is produced in our community—to actually harness that and produce energy, whether through biogas or some other thing. So we can use waste resources to create fuel for many of these industries and grow the workforce around this as we expand to produce more clean energy on a local level.

Certainly we have seen solar farms across our region—applications being approved and a number of solar farms developed. While we have had some concerns about that happening on high-value irrigated, productive land, there is nevertheless still a push to have a certain amount of solar farms within the region. But to be able to couple it with the opportunity to harness much of the waste we have and produce energy from that is really an exciting development. I think it is important to consider the work that people in our community have been doing on this. We have a group, a Goulburn Valley resilience group, that have been working hard to put together the thinking behind how on a local level in a highly agricultural community we might be able to do that. This group have been working hard with major industrial companies—including Bega, SPC, Pental, Gouge dry-cleaning—to understand what opportunity could look like for our region. Everyone wants a cleaner and greener community, and they believe that the shift to a circular economy will be good for our environment, and good for business as well, especially if it can bring down that cost of energy that people are now really facing in a very significant way. So bringing that can-do approach to the whole question of getting a shift in the economy to a circular economy is certainly happening in our region. I think there is a push to now try and get some investment to investigate how best we might do that.

It is interesting to note that the amount of green waste in a community like ours is massive. The capacity to be able to harness a lot of that green waste and turn that into some form of biogas is there, but it does take a lot of work to get these things to fruition. No doubt this bill is really part of the story in terms of dealing with a lot of the waste that would otherwise go to landfill. But there is waste that exists that could otherwise be harnessed for energy. We really need to rethink how our economy works and look at the markets and the information that is available that might flow from being able to use our waste resources in a more creative way rather than just throwing it back onto the environment to find a way to deal with it. I believe that this legislation is a significant step forward in creating the structures and the information that is needed to reconfigure the sort of thinking that we have had in the past and how we might deal with it.

Just on a practical level, I did a lot on Sunday—I also visited a local shop, the GV Wardrobe, which is simply a young woman who has taken on board the collection of a whole lot of second-hand clothing for the purpose of getting it back out there and into the community. She hired the local hall and filled it up with all the clothes she had been given or purchased at a low cost, and everything was on sale for $10. Well, I have got to tell you, there were a hell of a lot of people there going through the racks and looking for clothes. They were not your most upmarket, expensive brands—just ordinary, everyday clothes with men and women looking through them and looking at that notion of recycling. I think it is salutary to note that in Australia we buy 15 kilograms of clothing—56 new items on average—every year and that 10 kilograms of that ends up back in landfill. So the notion of being able to recycle and re-use in creative ways, whether you are this young woman doing it with clothing, whether you are doing it with all that green matter that might come from all the crops we grow across our region or whether it is other forms of waste, is really an exciting prospect for all of us and something that I think we all want to be able to develop so that we can hand on the notion of a cleaner, greener environment as we go forward.

In Shepparton we have three bins at the moment for kerbside collection, and the council has decided that we will shortly go to a fourth, which of course is the purple bin for glass collection. The way that people have changed their behaviour, have adapted to the recycling, the rubbish and the green waste—and will now to glass—is an example of how people can adapt, how communities can adapt and how society can adapt. It is a very salutary lesson to think that when people can adopt that sort of thing on that very basic level of household waste, we can then uplift that notion to something much bigger through government to deal with what is really massive waste in our community. To be able to then have the capacity to turn that into clean energy is truly remarkable, and this bill will help support that.

Ms HALL (Footscray) (16:58): I am very pleased to make a contribution on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022, and I am particularly pleased to follow the member for Shepparton. Recently we spoke about a very innovative program that really showcases what can be done in the circular economy at Footscray High School. I am very pleased that the member for Shepparton will be visiting me in Footscray in the near future and I will be able to show her firsthand some of the incredible work that is happening at Footscray High. I will talk in a bit more detail about what they have managed to achieve at that remarkable school, that local city high school with a farm as part of the school, which has been recognised in a number of ways as being a very innovative way for students to learn firsthand about the circular economy.

This bill continues the Andrews Labor government’s once-in-a-generation reform of Victoria’s waste and recycling sector and supports Victoria’s transition to a circular economy. This government is taking meaningful action on climate change, and the Footscray electorate is proudly contributing to this action. The people of Footscray and Melbourne’s inner west are proud of their industrial heritage, but they are also proud environmentalists. A cleaner, greener Footscray is a major priority of mine. To improve our tree canopy, to reduce waste, to tackle climate change and, importantly, to reduce our urban heat island effect are major concerns of our community and major priorities of mine. To that end I would like to acknowledge the Minister for Environment and Climate Action and thank her for hosting a forum in my electorate of Footscray two weeks ago, a very well-attended online event where she fielded questions from the community about the action we are taking in the circular economy, real action on climate change and what we are doing locally to make a real difference in Footscray. That includes of course the wonderful initiative More Trees for a Cooler, Greener West—which is a very popular initiative in the western suburbs, especially in Footscray where we do have a worse urban heat island effect than other parts of Melbourne due to our industrial heritage—where we are putting in half a million trees. It was great on National Tree Day, I think a couple of weeks ago, to join with the community when we planted 3000 trees along the Maribyrnong River. That was a terrific effort.

In addition to the recent forum I had with the minister, I had a parliamentary intern, Emma Ward, who researched this topic for me—how we can improve the circular economy in Footscray. Emma, who attends Monash University like I did, compiled a report titled A Green Future for Melbourne’s Industrial Inner West—and I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that this report was of such a high quality that she was jointly awarded this year’s Presiding Officers Prize. Emma’s report proposed a number of recommendations, including refurbishing the currently under-utilised open spaces in Footscray, greening Footscray’s laneways and improving organic recycling options for businesses. I ran a survey on my website asking for local input, which helped inform Emma’s report, and we had almost 200 responses, which blew me away, really. It just showed the interest and the passion in our local community about reducing the impact of climate change and improving organic waste recycling systems.

I know that locally there is much more we can do to protect the Maribyrnong River and our other natural assets. I remember a recent Clean Up Australia Day I spent in a kayak on the Maribyrnong River, and I was shocked that we collected over 300 kilograms of rubbish from the river. Most of that was single-use plastic like plastic bags. I know that the Footscray Riverside Action Group was not that surprised at the volume of rubbish, but that is exactly why I am proud to be part of a government that is taking decisive action to reduce single-use plastics. Of course I am thinking particularly of our sales ban on single-use plastic items, which will take place in a little over six months, on 1 February.

Our schools are also doing incredible work, as I noted before. Footscray High School’s farm has everything from chickens to yabbies. They have permaculture; they have a tiny home that the students have built themselves, which they use for stargazing; they have beehives; and they collect organic waste from the playgrounds. All of the lunchtime scraps are collected up by student volunteers, and they use a $64 000 closed-loop organic unit to turn that organic waste into fertiliser. The fertiliser is then returned to the farm, and on the farm they grow native grasses, which are then planted out into the local park, Footscray Park. It is just an incredible thing to see happening—the expertise in these young people in the circular economy and how they can use waste for good.

Previously the school was awarded the Community Leadership School of the Year at the ResourceSmart Schools Awards. Schools in the inner west have a great and proud history in that award program. Just this year Braybrook College down the road won School Volunteer of the Year. The winner in that category was another fantastic inner-west school, Wembley Primary School in Yarraville. Braybrook College were also a finalist in the Community Leadership School of the Year (Secondary) category, and their nomination was for their participation in the seeds in space program, where wattle-tree seeds are sent to the International Space Station where they are stored for a number of months before being returned to earth and compared to other seeds to measure their germination and growth. There are just incredible things happening in my local schools, but businesses too are embracing the importance of the circular economy. Green Collect, which has locations in Braybrook and Yarraville, is an absolute masterclass in recycling, upcycling and re-using. They are a not-for-profit certified social enterprise, and they provide social procurement opportunities as well. They take office equipment that would otherwise be thrown out, things like chairs, filing cabinets, highlighters, pens, bulldog clips—everything—and they repair or repurpose them so they can be used again. I have been to their warehouse in Braybrook. It is truly an absolutely incredible space.

The concept of waste is central to this bill. The Andrews government’s priority is to reduce, re-use and recycle waste first, and where that is not possible the goal will be to recover energy from waste, and to support this goal a waste-to-energy scheme is being implemented that will enable an annual cap on permitted waste. Waste-to-energy facilities play an important role in diverting waste from landfill and therefore are prioritised above landfill in the hierarchy of waste management options.

This bill I think—I have lots of notes, I perhaps spoke about Footscray High for too long—really is just another step forward in the Andrews Labor government’s initiative to tackle climate change and create a circular economy in Victoria, one that we can contribute to from the high school level through our organic waste bins that we now have in the City of Maribyrnong to our businesses as well, who are all doing their bit to improve our local environment. I commend this bill to the house.

Mr CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (17:07): It is with some pleasure that I rise this afternoon to speak on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. I must say in my electorate of South Barwon when I have gone out and about and engaged with my community, whether it be down at the local supermarket or down at the local shops or when I bump into people who know me down at the local train station, people over the last few years have engaged and discussed with me contemporary issues that they are reading about in the paper. For a period over the last few years we have seen exposed through the media a litany of public policy failures with respect to the waste management sector. I think most Victorians were shocked to find that a large percentage of our waste, which in good faith had been appropriately put into our recycling bins at home, was being exported overseas. I am very pleased to see that because of the exposure of those issues we have put in place through this legislation and other public policy responses a suite of reforms that will see in good faith those challenges and the response by the community being recognised. People actually do want to see their efforts at the kerb recognised appropriately. Of course we have before us today this circular economy legislation which I think will very much drive the uptake of re-used products into a whole raft of different aspects of our economy. The utilisation of glass for road-making materials is one that comes to mind. It is a very fit and a very good use of glass, but I would also like to see more glass recycled and re-used as glass.

The waste management sector has had a long journey to get to this point. I have actually taken a real interest in this part of the economy for a long time. When I was a young councillor with the City of Ballarat way back in 1999, 2000 and 2001, I had the opportunity to become the chair of the Central Highlands waste management group which, on behalf of a cluster of councils in and around Ballarat, had the responsibility of putting in place the then Bracks government’s reforms which saw the introduction of an additional bin to all households in that area—but probably across the state if my memory serves me correctly—where as a community we started our journey to recycling. I remember at that time that, whilst it was a popular reform, it was not universally liked. We had to work closely with our councils in that region and indeed, I am sure, EcoRecycle Victoria, which was the agency with all councils and all waste management groups, including the private sector, to make sure that that reform was put in place. From that moment in time we started a pretty profound journey and, as I say, whilst it was not universally liked at that point in time, I think the community very much has come on board.

In my part of the world—the Geelong region—the Surf Coast shire in the last two years was a very early mover to introduce a fourth bin, the little caddy that you would have on your bench where you would put your vegetable clippings and scraps from the kitchen, particularly anything that was vegetables and the like. I wondered, when the council went on that reform, whether that would be universally supported. I must say the feedback that I received, whilst I was not directly involved in its implementation, was very positive, and I commend the Surf Coast shire for that. They did it without any support from the state government—they did not seek it. I just wish to take the opportunity to acknowledge their leadership and the fact that they did that on behalf of their community with the full support of the community. Again, I reflected on my earlier experience and wondered whether it would be universally supported, but it was, and I think that is a good thing.

What we have seen really over the last few years is a lot of community buy-in to having a strong public policy solution. I certainly know that in my part of the world, the southern growth corridor of Geelong and the Surf Coast, we live in a very special environment. We have got the Barwon River that runs through the middle of Geelong. We have got the beautiful Corio Bay. We have got the beautiful beaches of the Bellarine. We have got the Surf Coast. All of our discarded waste, when it is not dealt with appropriately, effectively ends up on our beaches. It ends up in the Barwon River, it ends up in the Connewarre wetlands and it ends up effectively at Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads and all of those beautiful areas. So I think our community is very conscious of what happens when people illegally or inappropriately dump waste and what it actually means for our coastline.

I might take the opportunity to also acknowledge the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority and their hard work for as long as I have been associated with them—more than 20 years. They have not only taken the opportunity to educate our local community about what happens when waste is thrown out of a car window or whatever and where it might end up but also, I think thoughtfully, over the years invested in litter traps to make sure that litter is caught before it enters into our waterways wherever possible. Of course these litter traps are designed to capture a certain amount, and they need to be regularly cleaned out. So again I acknowledge the hard work of the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority, because they are more often than not dealing with the consequences of illegal activity, of literally tens of thousands of people in many instances, and collecting that waste and appropriately disposing of it.

This reform, I think, is very important, and I certainly commend the Minister for Environment and Climate Action on her hard work. I look forward to seeing new products brought to market, where we do recycle our waste. I know and I certainly note that right now we have huge costs in the construction sector with materials, and I think the circular economy provides a solution.

Mr BRAYNE (Nepean) (17:18): I also rise today to speak on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. Obviously the Victorian government is committed to reforming Victoria’s waste and recycling system in order to transition the state to a circular economy.

The need to move to this type of waste management stems from a few recent events. First, a few years ago, as many people are aware, China decided to refuse our waste recycling product, deeming it mostly spoiled, and put into almost immediate effect a ban. Governments right across the country and the world were immediately put on the back foot, having to find solutions to deal with a huge amount of waste that was not being offshored. On a personal note, I remain completely perplexed about why national governments of all political stripes allowed a situation to transpire where we were effectively reliant on another country to take our waste product. I just do not see how that was ever not going to result in tears.

Second, the sheer quantity of waste that we as Victorians and Australians produce each year is unsustainable—unsustainable in its production and unsustainable in its eventual output. It is not appropriate to continue to treat our earth, our planet, as a waste bin. It is critical we move to an economy where products can be re-used, remade and redeveloped. As we transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 as part of our climate change strategy it is important that we transition to a circular economy where we re-use our resources, reduce waste to landfill and promote sustainable practices that all Victorians can follow. That is why transforming our recycling system is so important. For many Victorians, for many Mornington Peninsula folks, recycling is one of the main ways in which they engage with sustainability policy. Everyone puts things in the bin, and when people intentionally put things in the recycling bin, they want to do so with the confidence that those materials will be re-used or repurposed.

As discussed, recent events exposed just how vulnerable the state of Victoria’s waste and recycling system was due to these forced changes. I mentioned the effects on governments worldwide, but in Victoria the collapse of SKM Recycling left 33 councils without kerbside recycling services, leaving many with no choice but to send recycling material to landfill. The disruption from China’s change demonstrated how vulnerable Victoria’s waste and recycling system was to changes in the global markets and the effects those changes can have on local recycling service delivery.

Victorians want to do their part to help make sure our state is climate resilient, but they want to be able to follow sustainable practices with the confidence that their recyclable materials will be re-used. We know that an industry as large as the waste and recycling industry requires strong regulation, and up until 1 July this year there had not been one central body responsible for this regulation. This government changed that by passing the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Bill 2021 and creating Recycling Victoria, a body responsible for overseeing and providing strategic leadership for that sector.

That bill also oversaw the beginning of Victoria’s container deposit scheme. This is an exciting development for the state: an opportunity to allow residents to make a bit of extra cash by recycling their products or by donating their money to chosen charities. When in Queensland last, I decided to try their container deposit scheme by taking a few bottles to one of their locations. When I arrived, however, I was met by a long line of people—a long line of people—who had trolleys full of plastic and glass bottles ready to be recycled. I just decided to hand my bottles over to one of them. It also reminded me of that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer and Newman cross borders to try and recycle product in a get-rich-quick scheme. So I hope we are ready for that when we do introduce our container deposit scheme. I hope we are ready for people coming. Clearly there will be a lot of people excited for the container deposit scheme when it rolls out in Victoria.

Transitioning to a circular economy is so important for the environmental future of our state. A circular economy continually seeks to reduce the environmental impacts of production and consumption while growing the economy through the productive use of our natural resources. It allows us to reduce waste, promote more environmentally friendly business models and foster innovation and productivity as we move towards a climate-resilient Victoria. I know that preserving the local environment and implementing sustainable practices are important to many people in my electorate of Nepean, and I am proud of the way that my community has consistently come together to fight for action on climate change. I am a member of an environmentally conscious electorate; I know that any changes that make us more sustainable will be welcomed by my community. Indeed since passing the circular economy bill this government has continued to develop reforms including enhanced statewide infrastructure planning and a cap on thermal waste-to-energy processing in Victoria. However, in order to be implemented, these reforms require further legislative change, and this bill delivers just that.

I will now turn to the specifics of this actual legislation. This bill delivers additional reforms to the circular economy act as well as to the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005 and the Environment Protection Act 2017 to support our state’s transition to a circular economy. Specifically this bill will deliver a waste-to-energy scheme which caps the processing of certain types of waste at facilities that process the waste using thermal waste-to-energy processes. This will provide for Recycling Victoria to license thermal waste-to-energy facilities in Victoria. The bill also enables Recycling Victoria to deliver a Victorian recycling infrastructure plan. This plan will consolidate the existing multiplan framework into a single plan, with a 30-year horizon to inform long-term strategic planning and support decision-making.

This bill also establishes a risk, consequence and contingency framework to ensure risks and consequences are identified and managed and contingency plans are implemented. This will help to minimise the impacts of serious disruptions to waste, recycling and resource recovery service delivery. The bill also provides for a new compliance tool on application by Recycling Victoria where courts may make monetary benefit orders in order to get illegal profits made from non-compliance with the waste and recycling laws. The bill also amends the Sustainability Victoria act and the circular economy act to provide Sustainability Victoria with a new information-sharing regime, including to carry out its functions and to support its continuing close work with Recycling Victoria, Environment Protection Authority Victoria and local councils.

The bill will also make amendments to the Environment Protection Act 2017 to improve its efficacy, including amendments to further equip the EPA and local governments with powers to effectively undertake their regulatory functions. Finally, the bill will also amend the Environment Protection Act to allow Recycling Victoria to receive funding from the waste levy collected under that act.

The combination of these reforms will see Victoria take the next step towards transitioning to a circular economy, with all these changes underpinning the transformational reforms that were implemented in last year’s circular economy act. This government has invested an unprecedented half a billion dollars to deliver this transition to a circular economy. This investment will support the creation of more than 3900 jobs, deliver on our state’s climate change targets and ensure Victorians have a recycling system they can rely on. Ultimately the reforms in this bill build upon the important reforms this government has already achieved, including changes to kerbside waste collection. By 2030 every household in Victoria will have access to four separate waste stream services—food and organics, glass, commingled recycling and residual waste. For most households this will come in the form of the four bins. Each bin will be a standard colour and the rules about what can and cannot go in each bin will be standard across the state. So when Victorians come down to the southern peninsula for their holiday, which of course I highly recommend, they know they can recycle all the same products as they can at home with confidence. This will help all Victorians to do their part to make our state greener, cleaner and more sustainable.

This four-bin system will make a huge difference to our environment. Giving Victorians access to a combined food and garden waste service will divert up to 650 000 tonnes of organic waste from landfill each year. This will in turn significantly reduce our state’s greenhouse gas emissions. Delivering these waste reforms is a key part of this government’s ambitious climate change strategy, a strategy that stands side by side with global leaders on climate change. The separate glass bin that will be introduced as part of these reforms means that the quality of our recyclable materials will be vastly improved. That is why a strong circular economy is so important for a sustainable Victoria. A circular economy keeps materials out of landfills. It cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions. It reduces air, water and soil pollution. It creates jobs—jobs that are directly linked to making Victoria more innovative, more sustainable and more climate resilient. That is the future this government is committed to. That is the future this government is delivering as part of this bill.

The combination of the circular economy act and this bill constitutes a once-in-a-generation reform of Victoria’s waste and recycling system, reform that will make these systems more effective, accountable and consistent with community expectations—my community’s expectations. Ultimately this bill makes several contributions to our transition to a circular economy. These reforms are just the latest example of this government’s commitment to tackling climate change and preserving our environment, and I am proud to say that I support this legislation. I commend this bill to the house.

Ms HALFPENNY (Thomastown) (17:28): I also rise to make a contribution to the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. I will just give a brief summary of the bill because previous speakers have gone through a lot of the bill in detail. I have to commend the member for Nepean for giving a really good explanation of the legislation as well as what the changes will do in fact for his electorate down on the peninsula. In essence this bill is looking to amend three bills within the environment, circular economy, waste and recycling areas. That includes the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021. It provides the body in there, Recycling Victoria, with additional powers and functions. There is also amendment to the Environment Protection Act 2017 to allow Recycling Victoria to be funded from the waste levy, and other improvements to better effect the act’s intent and operation. The third act that this legislation will amend is the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005, to support information sharing by Sustainability Victoria throughout the other organisations and entities.

The purpose of the bill is to continue to build on the Victorian government’s once-in-a-generation reform to Victoria’s waste and recycling sector, and it is also about making yet another contribution to mitigating the effects of climate change and bringing the Victorian economy and our society generally and the way we do things to becoming a more sustainable society, one that reduces waste and re-uses waste as much as possible.

Of course the circular economy is all about recognising that whatever we make, whatever we grow and whatever we manufacture contributes to climate change or has consequences for the environment. So the more we can recycle and re-use what has already been made, grown or manufactured, the more we reduce the amount of waste or damage which is created by manufacturing or making that product on the environment.

I think people have already gone into a bit of the context and history, but I want to do so as well. From 2019 there were a number of disruptions to the waste and recycling services in Victoria and indeed across the country and across the globe. First in Victoria, because of global circumstances, there was the collapse of SKM Recycling, and that left 33 councils without kerbside recycling services, leaving many of those with no choice but to send recyclable matter to landfill. This also really coincided with the announcement of China’s National Sword policy, which banned the import of most plastics and other materials for recycling. Again, it really highlighted the risks involved for a country or a state in Australia in relying on other countries to take their rubbish and waste. Really, I think it also goes to the expectation that countries ought to deal with their own waste rather than send it offshore for others to do things with, because in this case there was no guaranteed reliability. These disruptions demonstrated how exposed Victoria’s waste and recycling system was to changes in global markets and the effects those changes could have on local recycling delivery, because there was not really the infrastructure or the organisational set-up in Victoria to rapidly transition away from waste being taken overseas. There was not the infrastructure and ability in Victoria to deal with that additional waste, which was no longer able to be exported for disposal.

So in February 2020 the Andrews Labor government released Recycling Victoria: A New Economy, our 10-year circular economy policy, and in 2021 the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021was passed, which provided the legislative framework for achieving many of the commitments outlined in that policy, including establishing the entity of Recycling Victoria, setting out the standards of our four-bin system and also providing the policy framework for the container deposit scheme that others have spoken about.

We know that an industry as large as the waste and recycling industry requires strong regulation, and up until 1 July this year there had not really been one central body responsible for this regulation in order to ensure that it was looked at as a whole and in a more seamless and organised way. But our government also changed that. We created Recycling Victoria. This body now is responsible for overseeing and providing strategic leadership for the entire sector and all the components in it rather than hiding behind different sets of legislation and authorities and organisations, and it is also allowing it to be a little bit more streamlined and consistent. To put it simply, the circular economy is the ability to recapture waste to produce new materials, as I have said. Recycling is one of the primary ways most Victorians engage with sustainability policy. Everyone puts things in bins, and of course this is probably the best way or the way that really all of us in some capacity can contribute. We can all pick up waste, put it in a bin, select what sort of bin and where it is going to go and also contribute and have an effect on whether that material is used for recycling or whether it goes directly into landfill.

I think in the Thomastown electorate there is a lot of talk at the moment around waste and recycling, as for some reason there seems—and I believe this might have happened in other places as well—that there have been a lot of people disposing of waste in the wrong way. There has been a lot of litter and a lot of industrial waste left in some of the newer estates, on vacant blocks, in our parks and on soccer fields. It has really been something that is in the residents of Thomastown’s minds as they see this rubbish thrown around. One, it is not being put in bins, but then it is leading to the next step, which is, ‘Well, where actually is it going, even once it has gone into that bin?’, when we also see waste along some of the creeks and water estuaries that are also in the electorate.

It is really good to see a lot of young people that have moved into the area or are growing up in the area being so conscious and thinking about what happens to the stuff that they use and where that waste should and should not be going. There has been a lot of effort put into things such as Clean Up Australia Day. I know that there is a group, the Northern Youth Council, that has been established in the area and that is looking at clean-up days. They are making stickers to put on bins just to highlight the responsibility of all of us to ensure that our rubbish is disposed of in a responsible way and that we all make sure that we care for the environment.

In getting back to the more industrial level of the circular economy, there are a number of large waste names that do reside in the Thomastown electorate. There is Suez that is in Cooper Street. There is also Repurpose It, which I have spoken about in this chamber previously. This is an organisation, a company, that really does a lot in terms of the circular economy. It takes in construction waste and repurposes that into things such as combining it into the asphalt for roads. The concrete glass is then repurposed into other materials that are used, for example, in roads. I know that they have done a lot of work with Major Road Projects Victoria and VicRoads with their product.

Another really exciting project that is happening at the moment—again, in terms of roads—is the Childs Road duplication and the duplication of the bridge, which has been a major source of traffic congestion. That is now near completion. It is fantastic to see the partnership with an organisation called Reground, which is a business that goes around and collects the coffee grounds from cafes and the hospitality sector and will use that as fertiliser for plantings in all the great open space that is going to be around that Childs Road project, which includes of course lots of lovely walkways, recognition of the Indigenous heritage of the area and also some incredible bike paths.

The circular economy is being well and truly thought of within the Thomastown electorate. It is so important to have legislation that makes it easier, well-regulated and supportive to ensure that this type of industry can continue.

Mr RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (17:38): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022 and follow some of the speakers on these important legislative changes and reforms to environmental legislation and talk about the significance of this industry. I want to cover off on a few points: the importance of this from an economic standpoint and environmental standpoint and then some of the challenges that my community has faced for decades with the landfills that are decommissioned and are being phased out across the City of Kingston and the south-eastern suburbs.

We know that cutting our waste is such a significant priority. We have heard in this chamber during this debate about the challenges that we had a few years ago, which were leading all the media coverage at that time—the significant challenges we were facing in the recycling industry; the exporting of our recycling goods to China, mainly; the exposure on up to 33 municipalities; and the impact that that was having on our communities. Victorians, rightly, were concerned about the future longevity of the recycling industry and what we needed to do to futureproof it and, interestingly as well, to maximise the jobs creation and opportunity that come from the recycling sector. There are over nine jobs equivalent for waste that is diverted as opposed to the equivalent number of 2.8 in landfill.

Across the City of Kingston we have decades-old landfills that have been decommissioned over time. If you go down through the south-eastern suburbs and the Kingston green wedge, you will see open spaces that are being rehabilitated over a long period of time. It is contaminated land that is in the Kingston green wedge which cannot be used for community open space for many years to come. It is a legacy of the land space that we had and the significant impact that we had on the environment and landscape. That stands as a legacy of the practices of the past and the work that we need to do in the future to maintain our environmental outcomes and spaces and to protect our communities. That is why it makes so much sense to divert 80 per cent of landfill by the next decade. It makes perfect sense because of the impact on environments and how much of an impact that has on land usage into the future. The City of Kingston is about two-thirds privately owned, and the impacts that has on some of those landfills—some require up to 30 years of rehabilitation. With the methane gas impacts and the emissions that come from that as well it will take a lot of time for it to even be able to be accessed by communities in the future.

When you look at the work that has been done on the circular economy and recycling, it has been substantial. One particular project that we were really passionate and excited about was the Mordialloc Freeway. A significant project promised for a long time and talked about for decades, it took an Andrews Labor government to deliver the Mordialloc Freeway. But it was not just a road infrastructure project; there was so much more to it. The diversion of household waste in this project was substantial. Five hundred tonnes of plastic waste from landfill was diverted into recycled noise panels, really leading the nation. The panels are made from a mix of kerbside recycled plastics, including milk bottles, juice bottles and shampoo bottles, and soft plastics such as bread bags, food wrappers and bubble wrap, the equivalent of the amount of plastic waste collected from 25 000 Victorian homes in one year. But for the work of the Major Road Projects Victoria team these could have been steel noise walls, just like on the Dingley bypass, but it was that innovation to ask, ‘How can we do something different?’. I know the member for Carrum will know the organisation Packed Group in Carrum Downs. More than 70 staff were retained to make the 32 000 square metres of panels required for the project to meet the needs of the environment effects statement in mid-2019. That was a substantial undertaking. The Deputy Premier and I had the opportunity to meet with those workers who were installing those noise walls, and it is a great example of what can be achieved on a range of different projects. The diverting of all that waste was really innovative as well.

The City of Kingston have been leaders in recycling in our community for some time, and we have the great title of having the environmental school of the decade in Aspendale. St Louis de Montfort’s Primary School took out that title with Sustainability Victoria. They were the winner of the ResourceSmart School of the Decade Award, and they were a 5-star school. I have visited St Louis a number of times, and I am amazed how recycling, the circular economy and all the work that goes into those initiatives and the environmental outcomes at this school are embedded in all of the work that they do in their curriculum, the impact that that has on students, who see beyond their school community—even though that is so important—to the impact that they have in the City of Kingston and across Victoria and how they are acting as a school community on a global measure as well. That is a really important element of this. It is about education. It is about training and developing the next generation to understand the work that we need to do to educate our communities on why this matters and why it is so very important.

There is an education frame and there is an employment frame through the jobs that are created, and I know that the Minister for Environment and Climate Action has done a power of work talking about the economics and the jobs that are created in this space as well. Thousands of people will be employed because of the Andrews Labor government’s action and work in developing the circular economy and the work that has been done through Recycling Victoria. It is a really exciting policy space, and to see some of the transformation that has happened to date is truly extraordinary. Some members have touched on the long-term certainty for the business and community sectors as well into the future with the 30-year infrastructure plan on the horizon. That gives investment certainty in an industry where in 2019 we were exporting a lot of that waste. The impact that had was that the expectations Victorians had were not being met. A lot of people were surprised to learn of those challenges and some of the issues that we were facing as well.

I did enjoy the member for Brighton’s contribution about the coalition’s policy in this space. In his lead speech he talked a lot about the climate targets that they have—and obviously landfill contributes to about 3 per cent of emissions. The former leader of the Liberal Party had a plan to burn all the waste: just put it into an incinerator and off you go, a bit like trying to find some emails in the archives—just off they go into the incinerator, off into Netherspace. But the incineration of waste was where it really ended. Then obviously the former Leader of the Opposition did not have the opportunity to continue his work, but we really have not heard much since.

We had a confusion about when the Recycling Victoria authority started. The member for Bentleigh pulled the member for Brighton up on that. Then we had a bit of misleading information about their climate change targets as well, which have important interaction with some of the landfill discussion and the substantial impact that landfills have on emissions as well. We see that out in the south-eastern suburbs that I talked about before. He was talking about 50 per cent targets, but there is not universal support for that, is there, in the coalition? We have got the member for Kew, who opposes that quite vehemently, and I know there is not solidarity on their climate targets or their recycling targets. They have a bet each way, and they can speak out on various policies, but I think there is a lot of division around what that target is.

There is quite consistent certainty on this side of the chamber. The Andrews Labor government has been consistent in its climate change targets. The federal government claimed a lot of the credit for state and territory impact on climate change action and mitigation of emissions. It was not anything the feds did. It was the states and territories—a lot of their hard work—that contributed to those targets. We heard the member for Brighton as the lead speaker talking about the 50 per cent targets, but there is not universal support for that in the coalition, and it is important that they clarify what they actually stand for in this space, not just come to it at the last minute because a few teals have rocked up and given them a bit of a shake. Tell us what you stand for. It should be a bipartisan target and commitment, not flip-flopping on those and not having 50 different varieties of views depending on which opinion piece you are putting forward. As much as members are entitled to do that, that is the uncertainty and lack of consistency. We see that in recycling policy. We see that in climate change policy. And Victorians want to know that there is a long-term certain plan in the recycling sector, in lowering our emissions and transitioning into the future.

So those targets to divert 80 per cent of waste from landfill by 2030—if only years ago we had had a policy like that in the City of Kingston, given the impacts on our communities from landfills that we rehabilitate to this very day as we hand back open space and land in the south-east chain of parks and the sandbelt chain of parks—are really, really critical as well. This is great nation-leading policy. It is exciting to think of where this industry will be in years to come. This is a really important piece of legislation, and I commend the bill to the house.

Ms VALLENCE (Evelyn) (17:48): It is really interesting to hear the member for Mordialloc say that this is nation leading, because it is anything but. I will get to that in a moment. I am speaking today on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022, and it is absolutely like groundhog day—another Andrews Labor government bill on the circular economy, waste and recycling, but no real action and no real solutions. This bill has plans to consult and draft regulations but is very scant on the detail when it comes to any real action. It is an embarrassing display really by the Andrews Labor government, a tired government trying to play catch-up.

This bill provides for amending the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021. I spoke to that bill when it was before the chamber just about one year ago. In the Minister for Environment and Climate Action’s second-reading speech for today’s bill, she states this amendment will:

… reform … Victoria’s waste and recycling system, making it more transparent, accountable and reliable.

Now, this is a comical statement by the minister in her speech. The government will need to make up a significant amount of ground to have any credibility in this space. With only a few short months before the state election in November they have absolutely nothing to show when it comes to making our waste and recycling system more transparent and reliable and accountable.

The Premier and his Labor government have been floundering when it comes to the circular economy and waste and recycling after eight long years in power. Victoria has been in a waste crisis for years. I note a number of the Labor members in their contributions alluded to the waste crisis, a waste crisis that has happened on the watch of this Labor government. This Labor government for eight long years in power has allowed our landfills to be a dumping ground, with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of recyclable materials being dumped in landfills on their watch, landfills nearly at capacity, limited local industry development and an over-reliance over the years on offshoring waste to other countries via large foreign-owned corporates.

It was very interesting to hear the member for South Barwon lament that hundreds of thousands of tonnes of recyclable material was being dumped in landfill, and it was interesting because this happened under the watch of the government that he is a part of, this Andrews Labor government. It was only the work of the Liberals on the Parliament’s Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, PAEC, which exposed that under this Labor government 180 000 tonnes of recyclables ended up dumped in landfill at the collapse of the business SKM. This demonstrated a complete and utter failure of this Labor government to support diversification and development of Victoria’s waste industry, having all its eggs in one basket, and further, a complete and utter missed opportunity to ensure these recyclable materials were in fact recycled.

This bill is only attempting catch-up, and an embarrassing attempt at that, after having been dismally slow to act on the situation of China and other Asian markets closing their doors to Victoria dumping its waste there. In the minister’s second-reading speech she tried to pull the wool over Victorians’ eyes by stating that they have a ‘comprehensive response to major disruptions caused by the China National Sword policy’. This statement here in 2022 is an absolute joke. Let us reflect on that. The China National Sword policy was launched in 2017, well over a year before the last election, so over the course of this Andrews Labor government’s two terms they failed to act.

Industry was aware that China was preparing to close its doors to being a dumping ground for waste in around 2015, when this Labor government was in power, and I know this because I worked at that time in the tyre industry and was part of creating Tyre Stewardship Australia to provide a positive and industry-led way to deal with waste tyres. We were striving to transition from offshoring tyres to recycling tyres into rubber crumb for road base, recovering the synthetics and the metals for repurposing, and even investigating plans to extract oil via pyrolysis. As a private sector organisation we started taking action in 2016–17 because we knew that exporting waste was no longer going to be permitted, nor was it the right thing to do.

It absolutely begs the question of what the Andrews Labor government has been doing for the past seven years. Why does it keep saying that it is a leader in this space? Labor is anything but. Under the watch of the Andrews Labor government in these past few years we have had a troubling stockpiling of waste across Melbourne, with catastrophic consequences, and I think it was just the previous Labor member in their contribution who referred to that even in their own community. We have had warehouses imploding in the northern and western suburbs and waste fires that have burned in these suburban communities for weeks on end, causing pollution and being damaging to the environment and human health. People suffered from inhaling toxic smoke and were told to stay inside by a Labor government that had failed to act.

It demonstrated that the Andrews government’s environment regulator, the EPA, was hopelessly inadequate and not up to the job of regulating the disposal of waste in Victoria, such that they needed to spend millions of taxpayers dollars trying to bring the EPA into the modern era. Yet still Victorians today have no confidence that the Andrews government’s EPA is actually regulating the industry and keeping Victorians safe. Indeed this bill creates a new regulator, via Recycling Victoria, but what is really concerning about this is the complete and utter lack, in this bill before the house today, of detail when it comes to the rules and regulations on which Recycling Victoria will rely. Despite the bill referring to regulations there is absolutely no detail on what will be contained in these. To think that the Andrews Labor government that for the entirety of this term has failed to take sufficient action on waste and recycling crisis and has failed to consult adequately with industry and the community is putting forward this bill with no detail only weeks before the parliamentary term draws to a close really tells you everything about Labor’s failure to act and really calls into question how serious Labor is about fixing the waste and recycling crisis under the watch of its government.

By contrast the Victorian Liberals and Nationals have demonstrated how serious we are when it comes to the circular economy and reforming waste and recycling. This bill, we know, provides for container deposit and waste-to-energy schemes. These are great ideas, and do you know why? They are great ideas because these were the ideas in announced policies by the Victorian Liberals and Nationals years ago—over three years ago. The first policies we released in this term, in 2019, were a policy to introduce a container deposit scheme that benefited local, community and voluntary organisations and a zero-to-landfill waste-to-energy policy with a plan to stop household waste being dumped in landfill and instead offer a real solution for diverting waste from landfill to plants that produce low-emissions energy and support contributing to lower energy costs for Victorians.

Suddenly this government has realised that (a) it has got an energy crisis, (b) it has got a waste crisis and (c) Victorians are massively in support of the Victorian Liberals for their zero-to-landfill waste-to-energy plan. Unfortunately, however, this bill states that there will be a cap on waste that can be used for waste-to-energy facilities in Victoria. Why? I think Victorians need to know the answer. Is it that the government wants an unnatural protection of its corporate mates that have already been permitted to generate energy from waste in safe Labor seats? Labor wants to ban energy from gas, and now it wants to ban energy from waste, all at the same time as we have a cost-of-living crisis under this Andrews Labor government and the highest energy prices in the country. It makes absolutely no sense. There should be no cap on feedstock to low-emissions energy production from waste. Indeed the intention of the Victorian Liberals and Nationals is to remove this requirement of a cap via amendment in the Legislative Council, which I fully support.

Furthermore, I note that the government indicates its reason for a cap is to ensure recyclable materials cannot be used for waste-to-energy facilities. That is all very well and good but only if the recycling industry is so well developed that it has markets for recycled and repurposed products, which we know is not the case in Victoria. Recycling capability needs a serious uplift in Victoria, indeed in Australia, and that will take investment and years of recycling businesses to develop production capability. Unfortunately the Andrews Labor government has completely failed industry, it has failed the community and it really needs to take serious action because the Victorian Liberals and Nationals will.

Ms WARD (Eltham) (17:58): That was pretty astonishing—pretty astonishing that you can spend 10 minutes talking and actually not be terribly accurate. I suppose this gives me the opportunity to talk about energy costs in the first instance and talk about our $250 power saving bonus, which I know many members here have been actively encouraging people in our electorates to participate in. I recognise that a number of federal Liberal MPs have been doing the same thing—in fact they have been advertising. I have got a constituent who has actually saved $1200 on their bill. They were gobsmacked. They could not believe that using the Victorian Energy Compare website would give them such a good deal on their energy costs. In fact they were a bit embarrassed that they had let their energy costs climb so high before they queried how expensive they really were.

It is not true to say that we have the most expensive energy costs in this country; it is not true at all. We know that in New South Wales and Queensland, for example, they are more expensive than energy costs are in this state. So I would urge those opposite to actually be accurate when they stand in this place. While they might be reading from their notes quite diligently, it would be useful to ensure that those notes are actually accurate and reflect the reality of what is happening in this state, and what is happening in this state is that we are leading the nation when it comes to addressing clean energy and the challenges of climate change. We saw that in the last federal election, when the federal Labor Party adopted a number of our policies and people voted to support those, and we have seen federal voters actually reject the coalition’s attempt to ignore the realities of climate change.

With your indulgence I will also refute a few other things that were just said. Sustainability Victoria has awarded almost $102 million in grants to improve the waste and recycling sector, leveraging a further $314 million investment from the private sector and other levels of government. These grants are all about encouraging innovation and development in this sector. This funding has resulted in 957 000 tonnes of waste and resource recovery capacity—957 000. It is anticipated a further 933 000 tonnes of processing capacity will be developed by 2025, all thanks to the funding by this government. This is the kind of work we have been doing in the last eight years.

We have introduced a single-use plastics ban, with the government leading by example. Already every Victorian government agency is single-use plastic free. I do not have to tell you, Acting Speaker—you would have the same experience when you go to the supermarket—everybody is turning up with their bags. Everybody is reducing the plastics that they use, and they are doing it because we have created opportunities for them to do so. We have changed legislation and we have changed behaviours, and we are seeing less rubbish as a result.

On average in this country we produce around about 500 kilograms of residential and commercial waste each year. That is nearly 500 kilograms per person. The member for Sandringham showed how much of a one-trick pony the opposition are when their only policy really in this space is to go to waste to energy as a solution for what we can do with our rubbish. Where is their clean energy policy? Where are their policies? They are full of inaccuracies, they are full of contradictions, but where are their policies? We are, what, just over 100 days out from polling day. Where are their policies that show Victorians that they are actually serious about addressing the need for a clean energy economy and addressing the challenges of climate change?

One of the things that the opposition have raised has been the waste to energy that we see in a number of countries, including Denmark. Now, I will give you a quote from Jens Peter Mortensen, who is a waste expert at the Danish Society for Nature Conservation. He said that:

The process of burning trash is inherently polluting—you can put state-of-the-art pollution controls on an incinerator, but that doesn’t make the facility clean …

You may remember the days when everybody had an incinerator in their backyard. I know we did. We had incinerators at school. In fact I have still got a small scar here on my arm from when I was the monitor at primary school and got to throw crap in the incinerator. A bit of ash fell on my arm. We all threw everything in the incinerator. No matter what it was, in it went, and I can only imagine the damage that that caused to our atmosphere. But considering that since the 1970s our population has increased tenfold, the amount of pollution that would come from us using incinerators in our backyards would be extraordinary. It would absolutely be extraordinary.

The other challenge with waste to energy is that you need a lot of rubbish. You do not recycle. You actually need a lot of rubbish. We are seeing countries like Denmark and Sweden import rubbish into their country. They are actually buying rubbish from other countries so that they can have their incinerators at full capacity, because they are not actually energy efficient unless they are at full capacity; that is how they work. So what happens when you start to run out of rubbish? What happens when you have people who are not buying stuff that they cannot recycle? Well, Denmark has got a problem, because they do not have enough rubbish. In fact they are actually starting to close some of their incinerators because they cannot meet their recycling measures and they are running out of recycling. But let us not again let the facts get in the way of reality. We know those opposite tend to dwell on and go down the path of unreality rather than actually dealing with the facts. In 2018 Denmark imported nearly 1 million tonnes of rubbish from the UK and Germany among other countries to ensure that their incinerators were full. That was four years ago; things are harder now. What seemed like a good idea, what seemed like a clever way to deal with energy pollution, is not so much.

In the short time that I have got left I want to talk about our Big Build, and I want to talk about our exciting Recycled First policy. This is embedded in our Big Build, and it means that we are working hard to recycle materials such as aggregates, glass, plastic, timber, steel, ballast, crushed brick, crumb rubber and reclaimed asphalt pavement. And under our Recycled First policy, companies who want to bid on our infrastructure projects must detail how they will optimise the use of recycled and re-used materials that meet existing standards and specifications. It is embedded in the way we do things, this opportunity for recycling and this opportunity to create new economies. So the program will incorporate recycled and re-used materials that meet existing standards for road and rail projects. As examples, the M80 ring-road, Monash Freeway and South Gippsland Highway upgrades will have all used more than 200 000 tonnes of recycled materials. Now, 190 million glass bottles have been used in surfaces on the $1.8 billion western roads upgrade.

A member: That is a lot of green bottles.

Ms WARD: It is absolutely a lot. Recycled demolition material was also used to build extra lanes along 24 kilometres of the Tullamarine Freeway as well as the Monash Freeway and the M80 ring-road. We are also re-using materials created by our own projects, with 14 000 tonnes of soil excavated from the Metro Tunnel site in Parkville now being used in pavement layers in Point Cook. This material weighs as much as 226 E-class Melbourne trams and would otherwise have gone to landfill.

Almost 56 million tyres are discarded nationally every year, but just 10 per cent are recycled. So researchers have started trialling the use of crumbed tyre rubber on busy metropolitan roads, with asphalt being tested on a 1½-kilometre section of East Boundary Road in East Bentleigh, which has used around about 1600 recycled tyres.

The previous speaker said this government has done nothing. That is just a short shopping list of stuff that is coming out of our Big Build to show how seriously we take recycling and the work that we are doing to ensure that that cyclical economy keeps on going. There is so much that we can do, and this government knows it. Through Recycle Victoria, which began on 1 July—which is another mistake in what other speakers over there have spoken about, because they have got this idea that it starts with this legislation—we have already started it. The whole program that we have got, our recycling, will create nearly 3500 or 4000 jobs, whereas when you throw things into landfill you would be lucky to get two per tonne. We are creating real job opportunities, we are creating a green economy and we are creating a city and a state that are cleaner and greener than they have ever been before.

In the last few seconds I want to talk about Banyule council, which has finally gone ahead with creating extra bins. They have now got a green recycling bin, which is terrific. We have had them in Nillumbik for close to 20 years. They are easy to do. Get chooks, feed your chooks, put it in your own compost—put it in your green bin. We can reduce our green waste. I commend this legislation.

Mr J BULL (Sunbury) (18:08): I am absolutely delighted to contribute to this piece of legislation this evening and of course follow on from the terrific member for Eltham, who knows and understands within her local community the importance of not just this bill but also the government’s broad agenda, our ambitious plan, to make sure that we are at each and every opportunity supporting those measures and investing in those technologies to improve our environment and make sure that we are not just at the forefront of the nation but global leaders in this space.

As I said, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this bill, the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. This is of course a government that cares deeply for our environment, and the member for Eltham just spoke at length about the values that underpin this piece of legislation, with all of those initiatives that have been referenced by members on this side of the house. We know and understand the importance of caring for the environment and finding solutions to those complex problems, and we also know and understand that people within local communities, within the Victorian community, care deeply for our natural environment and are committed to its protection and making the very best of it. It is why we have made such huge investments, significant investments, in renewable energy with the Victorian Renewable Energy Target, the VRET—through a very important piece of legislation which goes to the heart of renewable energy in this state—and significant investments around solar, wind and new technologies for better and cleaner power.

We know and understand and have worked with local communities, with business and with industry to develop these targets but also legislation such as this bill before the house this evening that goes to investing in technologies that deal with the challenges that confront all of us. There has been a lot of work, which other members in the debate this evening have referenced, that has gone into the Recycling Victoria: A New Economy initiative. I do want to commend not just those in my local community and my electorate but those right across the state who are genuinely committed. Acting Speaker Crugnale, as I am sure you know about your local community, whether you are visiting schools, neighbourhood houses or community groups, people within our communities genuinely care about this space. There is a commitment to keeping local communities clean. There is a commitment to making sure that we are recycling when and where we can. The government is committed to doing that not just through this strategy but through ensuring that it is driving down the cost of living, making sure, as cost-of-living pressures are inevitably within the community, that it does not impose additional burdens on those within our community. This is a significant piece of legislation.

The Recycling Victoria: A New Economy strategy is a plan for waste and recycling. Recycling Victoria is of course the government’s 10-year policy, the action plan for waste and recycling. We know that those key initiatives, those key pieces of work that were done within the strategy, are centred around kerbside reform, stronger recycling oversight, new rules to cut waste, waste to energy, high-risk and hazardous waste management, reducing business waste, investing in priority infrastructure and providing support for local communities and councils. I know that other members have spoken about the role of councils within this space. It is a very important role, and I know that you, Acting Speaker, and many members in the house know and understand that relationship between the management of local councils and the work that they do and the work that many of our businesses and local communities do each and every day within this important space. The other element contained in the initiative is the behavioural change component—having information, having tools and having education and awareness programs around making sure that from the very earliest of ages we are educating all of those within our community about the importance of doing the right thing when it comes to waste management and making sure that, as I mentioned earlier, we are doing it in an effective and cost-efficient way.

The transition to the circular economy—and this was also contained within the initiative—has the potential to boost the Victorian economy by up to $6.7 billion. It will help to create more than 3900 new jobs, help businesses grow in new ways and create new sectors and new modes of employment, produce cost savings for households, improve social inclusion, abate greenhouse gas emissions, drive greater resource recovery and also establish a system that Victorians can rely on. This is, of course, incredibly important right across the goals that were mentioned within the initiative: making sure of those improvements to business productivity and reducing waste; supporting local communities; addressing plastic pollution, which I know was mentioned by an honourable member just before; supporting the re-use economy; reforming the way households recycle; having fit-for-purpose landfill levies, governance and regulation; increasing the use of recycled materials; encouraging waste-to-energy investment; and supporting those areas where we know there are higher risks within hazardous waste management, making sure that that is also an important area that we focus on.

We know that the circular economy has that ability to create jobs, very similar to the way that the VRET and the monumental, large-scale, significant investment in renewables have the ability to create jobs, particularly for those in country Victoria and those in rural and regional Victoria. Making sure that there are job opportunities along the way is of course critically important to all of us as local members and right across government.

The legislation before the house will amend the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021 to provide Recycling Victoria with additional powers and functions, amend the Environment Protection Act 2017 to allow RV to be funded from the waste levy and make other improvements to better effect the act’s intent and operation, and amend the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005 to support information sharing by Sustainability Victoria. We know that recycling is one of the primary ways that Victorians engage with sustainability and with sustainability policy more generally. We know that waste is generated each and every day. People should have the opportunity to participate in a recycling system whereby they have confidence and whereby they know and understand that it is the system that supports the re-use of waste through the circular economy. We must make sure that we are a government that works hard on not just the process, the framework and initiatives that I referenced earlier within my contribution, but also the education piece. Whether it is this government’s significant investment within early childhood education, within kinder—that $9 billion to make sure that we are giving our tiniest Victorians the very best opportunity and the very best start in life—or many of the initiatives that are contained within our sustainability legislation and the VRET, ensuring that education is at the forefront of most of our policies, if not all of our policies, should be at the forefront of much of what this government does.

This is an important piece of legislation because it goes to making sure that the work that was done in 2020 and the work that was done in 2021 and the amendments contained within the legislation today continue to ensure that Victorians have the opportunity to play their part. We know through analysis that Australia’s recycling sector right across the country creates 9.2 jobs for every 10 000 tonnes of waste managed, whereas sending the material to landfill creates only 2.8—so just from maths on the fly, a factor of around three. Ensuring that those jobs, as I mentioned earlier, are a critical component of the work that is done, of the initiative or of the framework is incredibly important. This government’s waste and recycling reform measures will create those more than 3900 jobs, a significant piece of work.

It is all about a better environment, a cleaner state and a smarter state that can deal with the challenges of consumption and of energy needs whilst combating the cost of living. That is what the Andrews government stands for. We will of course continue to invest in and work with local households, with businesses and with small-, medium- and large-scale industry to ensure that this work continues. It is an important piece of legislation, and I commend it to the house.

Mr HAMER (Box Hill) (18:18): Can I thank the member for Sunbury—a fantastic contribution from a fantastic, passionate advocate for his community, the community of Sunbury. I too rise to make a contribution on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. It is a very significant bill, and it is always a pleasure to get up and talk about bills that are there to improve our environment. We have introduced in the Andrews government, both during this term and in the previous term, many pieces of legislation. Often we have been on our own in terms of introducing that legislation. It has been rare to get support across the aisle on key pieces of environment legislation, despite some people trying to rewrite the record books through what positions might be currently being taken.

This particular legislation is really about enhancing and strengthening the Recycling Victoria: A New Economy recycling framework that was announced in 2020 and legislated for in 2021. A particular component of this piece of legislation is to introduce a thermal waste-to-energy scheme, which will cap the processing of certain types of waste at facilities that process the waste using thermal waste-to-energy processes. It provides for the head of Recycling Victoria to license thermal waste-to-energy facilities, but they will not be able to issue licences that collectively exceed an annual cap on the permitted waste, which will be expressed as 1 million tonnes per financial year. I understand that this has been an issue in some countries that have pursued waste-to-energy plants quite vigorously, where the demand for waste has outstripped the supply for waste within those particular jurisdictions. They now need to be importing waste just to keep some of those plants running, which is obviously a large disincentive, because we are not trying to increase waste, even if we are moving it to energy. The key in any recycling is to re-use, recycle and repurpose in the very first instance, and the waste-to-energy solution should always be—I would not call it the last resort, but what you would be targeting are those remnant wastes that cannot be re-used, recycled or repurposed.

As has been addressed by a number of other speakers, the Andrews government, through the Recycling Victoria plan and framework, has invested millions in improving the re-usability of materials, the recyclability of materials and the repurposing of materials. We have heard a lot about the breakdown and use of glass, particularly in road base, and the use of rubber and rubber tyres in terms of various materials and equipment that you might see also in the road system. This is exactly where the investment needs to be. It needs to be focused on this re-use.

I know the member for Sunbury also touched on the education component, and I see this particularly in our schools and amongst the younger members of our community not only at schools but also amongst the Scouting movement. They are really driving this waste management change and looking to have a cleaner environment, and it is really being led from the ground up. You see it across a lot of my local schools, and a number of our local Scouting organisations have really taken it upon themselves to recycle and pick up waste that they see around their local area and try and repurpose it and use it for other means.

I know that even in my own life, particularly at our office, we recently made the purchase of a worm farm. We are doing some more recycling and waste management at home and separating our food and organic waste, and we have got some very hungry worms that have now taken their rightful place in the Box Hill office. I have also discovered that one of the ways to help feed the worms is to make sure they get a mix—not only do they like the food scraps but they also like the shredded paper, so if there are a few documents there that need to go through the shredder, they go through the shredder and they are devoured by the worms. I have found a new use for chopsticks as well, because apparently you have to be very careful when you are tossing and turning the worms in their worm farm to make sure that the nutrients and the right balance of nitrogen and carbon are mixed into the soil.

I see this as all part of the greater plan for recycling, waste management and reducing the amount of waste that is going to landfill. I think I have a statistic here about the amount of waste that was going to landfill. The target is to divert 80 per cent of waste from landfill by 2030, which is what is set out in the Recycling Victoria: A New Economy program. Part of that is also ensuring that every Victorian has access to food and garden organic waste recycling services or local composting by 2030. I do know that Whitehorse council has just introduced that over the last few months. I have had a few residents complain that their caddy bin is not quite large enough for the food waste that they generate, but I must say I think it is an education process and you learn over time. I found, having this bin now in place for a year and a half in the Boroondara part of my electorate, how quickly you adapt, adjust and reduce your food waste that is going into the bins, and now obviously it is going straight into the food and organic bin. Initially when it was introduced the council announced that they were only going to have waste-to-landfill collection once a fortnight. I said, ‘How is that going to work? How are we going to manage going from weekly to fortnightly?’. I would say now that when we have our fortnightly bin collection the bin is only half full. We have been able to get almost all of our food and organics into the food and organics bin. We have removed all of our plastic packaging. The amount of plastic packaging that comes with all manner of food and toys and games—you name it, it comes with plastic packaging, particularly that soft plastic packaging. I try and do a drop-off at the supermarket every two or three weeks and it is probably up to my head, carrying 10 or 11 bags. It is a really important step to furthering our Recycling Victoria program. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr McGHIE (Melton) (18:28): I rise today to contribute to the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022. Firstly, I want to thank the Minister for Environment and Climate Action and her staff for this important piece of reform. It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Box Hill and hear his contributions, in particular in regard to recycling and the reduction of waste. I know in our circumstances at home, with the change to the recycling bins, we certainly have reduced what we throw out as waste nowadays, which is fantastic.

The Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021 formed a central part of the Andrews Labor government’s once-in-a-generation reform of Victoria’s waste and recycling system to make it even more effective, accountable and consistent with community expectations. This bill delivers additional reforms to the circular economy act as well as the Sustainability Victoria Act 2005 and of course the Environment Protection Act 2017 to support our state’s transition to a circular economy. The Andrews Labor government has invested an unprecedented amount of $515 million to deliver this transition, and this will support the creation of more than 3900 jobs, deliver on our climate change targets and ensure Victoria has a recycling system that we can rely upon. That is what this government does: it invests in jobs, it invests in our environment and it certainly invests in our climate. It is always important to realise that as we transition to a new paradigm we need to take people with us and we need to create good jobs and invest in people as much as we invest in infrastructure and in policies.

This bill reminds me of the excellent work of Outlook at the Melton recycling facility, and I was delighted to represent the minister when the Andrews Labor government contributed $490 000 to upgrading this innovative recycling facility through the $26.1 million Resource Recovery Infrastructure Fund and the $50 million e-waste infrastructure support program. Of course the upgrades have boosted the processing capacity of the facility by 25 per cent. That is a further 7250 tonnes of waste being kept out of landfill, and it created two new jobs at that time. So in total Melton recycling facility has the capacity to divert more than 45 000 tonnes of waste from landfill each year. That is amazing, and that is in the area of Melton alone. The jobs created at Melton mean that more locals are working where they live or close to where they live, either at this facility or in the shop that sells goods that get a renewed lease of life rather than ending up as landfill. What they have set up at this facility is a shop that sells off recycled clothing, equipment, toys, bikes and things like that, so it is a fantastic innovation.

There have been some exciting things happening in Melton, like when I represented the Minister for Water at Greater Western Water’s Melton treatment plant. I was there to celebrate a waste transformation innovation: biosolids to biochar technology. It was quite amazing to see what was happening here at this Greater Western Water treatment plant. This innovative technology, developed by RMIT University, makes biosolids management more environmentally sustainable and cost effective, also helping to reduce carbon emissions for both the water and agriculture industries. By creating a safer product with a steady supply stream, it also provides our farmers and the wider agriculture industry with a product which is completely natural and can improve soil health and fertility. It is programs like these all across the Andrews Labor government’s portfolios that show we take our environment and climate seriously, whether it be energy capturing at Greater Western Water; the solar arrays; the energy-efficient upgrades in Melton South at Heather Westaway’s home, which is one of the Healthy Homes projects; or the commitment that the new Melton hospital will be fully electric. This government gets on and delivers climate and environmental action whilst creating jobs.

The bill introduces a thermal waste-to-energy scheme, which caps the processing of certain types of waste at facilities that process the waste using thermal waste-to-energy processes. It provides for the head of Recycling Victoria to license thermal waste-to-energy facilities in Victoria. Recycling Victoria cannot issue licences that collectively exceed an annual cap on permitted waste, expressed as 1 million tonnes per financial year. The bill also enables the head of Recycling Victoria to deliver a Victorian recycling infrastructure plan, consolidating the existing multiplan framework into a single plan, with a 30-year horizon to inform long-term strategic planning and support decision-making. This bill also establishes a risk, consequence and contingency framework to ensure risks and consequences are identified and managed and contingency plans are implemented to minimise impacts of any serious disruptions to waste, recycling and resource recovery service delivery. The bill also requires the head of Recycling Victoria to prepare an annual market report and provides a function to prepare market strategies.

The bill provides for a new compliance tool on application by Recycling Victoria where courts may make monetary benefit orders to get the illegal profits made from non-compliance with the waste and recycling laws. This bill makes amendments to the Environment Protection Act 2017 to improve its efficacy, including amendments to further equip the EPA and local government with powers to effectively undertake their regulatory functions under the Environment Protection Act 2017, such as enabling the EPA and councils to appoint third parties as authorised officers, and amendments to mitigate the risk of liquidators avoiding clean-up costs.

The Recycling Victoria: A New Economy plan sets four ambitious targets for improving our state’s recycling system, and they are to divert 80 per cent of waste from landfill by 2030 with an interim target of 72 per cent by 2025, to cut total waste generation by 15 per cent per capita by 2030, to halve the volume of organic material going to landfill between 2020 and 2030 and to ensure every Victorian has access to food and garden organic waste recycling services or local composting by 2030.

Recycling is one of the primary ways most Victorians engage with sustainability policy. Everyone puts things in the bin. When people put things in the recycling bin, they want to do so with the confidence that those materials will actually be re-used or repurposed. We know that an industry as large as the waste and recycling industry requires strong regulation. Up until 1 July of this year there had not been one central body responsible for this regulation, and our government changed that by creating Recycling Victoria, a body responsible for overseeing and providing strategic leadership for the sector. This bill includes important reforms that will allow Recycling Victoria to provide that leadership and guidance.

The reforms in this bill build upon the important reforms this government has already achieved, including our reforms to kerbside waste collection, and by 2030 all across Victoria, no matter where you live, every household will have access to four separate waste stream services: food and organics, glass, commingled recycling and residual waste. For most households this will come in the form of four bins.

Before I finish I should say that a lot of our major constructions, such as the M80 ring-road, are done with recycled materials. In fact, in a world first, some of the noise walls along the Mordialloc Freeway were made with 75 per cent recycled plastic. It would be great if the Melton City Council investigated this to reduce the cost of the sound wall they promised constituents at the Silverdale estate. They had committed $2 million and put out a tender but now have taken the money away, leaving residents frustrated and angry that they do not have their sound wall. Maybe they could do some research into the Mordialloc Freeway and try to reduce the cost and deliver on the promise of a sound wall for those residents. This bill is another example of the Andrews Labor government delivering for our environment and our climate alongside delivering jobs and improving our economy. Obviously if you are re-using materials, they can go into the construction of roads and other great infrastructure. I support this legislation. I once again congratulate the minister and her staff, and I commend the bill to the house.

Mr FREGON (Mount Waverley) (18:38): I also rise to speak on the Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022 and thank the Minister for Environment and Climate Action for her ongoing sensational work in this area. We really have come on in leaps and bounds in even just the last three and a half-odd years that I have been in the house.

I just want to start by commenting on a couple of our colleagues. The member for Eltham made a good point about energy prices and the $250 power saving bonus, because that was raised by someone opposite. It really is part of a package of works in the energy sector that the minister has been working on, with the added bonus obviously of assisting with cost-of-living pressures that are coming to everyone in our state. The member for Eltham talked about many people calling in to her office to get some assistance, especially our seniors, who might find it a bit more difficult with computers. My office is no different; I think there are about 600 or something that we have helped. Most people we bump into now on the streets are saying, ‘Yep, I’ve already done it’. It is good to know that every one of those people have gone through that compare process to check their energy, and I know when I did it last I saved about $300 or $400 a year myself. So that is a really important measure. The member for Box Hill was talking about measures in regard to multiple bins in Whitehorse, and I would like to come back to that because my own council at Monash has recently changed over their bins to a two-week schedule on general rubbish, so certainly that is a matter of poignant note at the moment for Monash residents.

A circular economy continually seeks to reduce the environmental impacts of production and consumption while enabling economic growth through more productive use of natural resources. It allows us to avoid waste with good design and effective recovery of materials, and having that as a basis of policy, of targets to reduce waste to, I guess, that perfect world where we do not need any new resources, we just use the ones that are already sitting around—obviously we probably will not reach that, but having that drive to minimise that waste is so important. It promotes more efficient business models and encourages intense and efficient product use, such as sharing products between multiple users or supplying a product as a service that includes maintenance, repair and disposal.

I think about my grandfather’s shed back in the day. He would have had tools, devices, power tools that had probably lasted 30, 40, 50, 60 years, whereas now we seem to have moved in the last 20 or 30 years to an economy where everything is disposable, everything is built with a life span. Something like an iPhone, for instance, is designed effectively to last a few years, and then you need a new one. That is part of the business model. I think we need to move away from that, and having a driving policy framework to lead us to a circular economy hopefully works against some of those throwaway business models. I do not necessarily think we will go back to the days when we built something to last for 60 or 70 years, but the chisels that I got from my grandfather’s house in my garage are quite fine, and they are probably about 80 years old now. So it is a good thing if we can do it.

The value that people obtain from the resources used to create these goods and services will increase by making sure that we get more use out of them. It can transform our linear economy mindset, that take and throw away, as I mentioned, and foster innovation and productivity, invigorate existing businesses and create new ones, delivering more jobs and more growth for local, regional, state and global economies. We do not necessarily know what the next new thing is. If you go back 20 years, we all thought we would live on our iPhones—hang on, 20 years? Let us say 30 years, and I think my phone was about this big. I felt pretty clever having one of those back in the NEC days. I thought I was pretty good at the age of 20-odd. I have gotten over that, obviously.

The bill amends the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act 2021 to continue the Victorian government’s delivery of this once-in-a-generation reform to Victoria’s waste and recycling system, making it more transparent, accountable, effective and reliable. We have invested an unprecedented $515 million to deliver this transition—so that is delivered—which will support the creation of more than 3900 jobs and, delivering on our climate change targets, ensure Victorians have a recycling system they can rely on. This goes to other work that the minister has done: our commitment to offshore wind, for instance; commitments for the Victorian renewable energy targets; and our Victorian default offer to make our power cheaper than in the other states, as one of my colleagues mentioned before. Victoria’s electricity prices are vastly cheaper than those in both New South Wales and Queensland. It is a mix of everything new.

So transitioning to a circular economy has a multitude of benefits and can boost Victoria’s economy by up to $6.7 billion by improving material efficiency and recycling and help to create more than 3900 jobs. It will help business grow in new ways and create new sectors and drive businesses to think of what that next new thing is. The bill also introduces a thermal waste-to-energy scheme which caps the processing of certain types of waste. The member for Eltham talked about examples from other parts of the world and the Scandinavian countries, where they are now importing waste. I think that does not sound like a great idea. We also realised a few years ago—for me it was a surprise—that we were exporting so many of our recycled goods to other countries. I presume for many of us it was a surprise that that seemed to be the business model. When that stopped, as we have heard before, over 30 councils had big problems because they did not have a recycling model that was going to work anymore. Luckily for us in the district of Mount Waverley, Monash council were not affected by that. Their contracts—they used Visy for theirs—were not affected. That was a good thing. Unfortunately, because of when they signed their contracts we do not have a purple bin for glass, and I do not think they are in a hurry to put that in, so we will not get to see the Teletubby bins in front of my house anytime soon, which is a bit of a shame.

I am running out of time and there is so much to talk about on this fantastic bill, but I just want to make a couple of references to some wonderful young people in the Mount Waverley district. The Glendal Primary School waste warriors a couple of years ago, when Monash council were putting in efforts to do the food organic and garden organic—the food into the green bin—processes, had a great presentation about the benefits of that. They were very inspiring young people at the primary school. A year later I went to Brentwood Secondary College, who are a certified five-star resource-smart school and from memory won the Premier’s Sustainability Award last year, I think it was, for that. Sustainability is embedded across that school facility, community and curriculum. Venkata Kalva down there runs the green team, and he should be very, very proud of all of the work that he has done, and obviously principal John Ballagh as well. When I was there it was a year after I had been to Glendal. I bumped into a young woman—I think she was in year 7—it will make sense in a second. She had a stall running, and she was trying to tell everyone about the food waste and how this will benefit our environment and sustainability. That young woman that I spoke to then the year before had been in the Glendal waste warriors. Our young Victorians have worked this out maybe quicker than some of us older Victorians. This government will make these changes, which will benefit not only them but all Victorians. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (18:48): I take great pleasure in joining the debate on this important bill, which really goes to the heart of what we need to be doing to minimise climate change but also to minimise costs to businesses, to households and to our environment. I very rarely disagree with the member for Mount Waverley. In his contribution he talked about the waste warriors in his community. He rightly said that they understand what needs to be done, they are focused on what needs to be done and they are coming up with solutions. But it is actually not older Victorians, I think, or previous generations; it is probably those somewhere in between that need to make the change.

The Green family have lived in this state—not the Greens party, the Green family—on my dad’s side, in central Victoria, since the 1850s. It was quite isolated. My grandmother Eva Mary Green nee Dawson passed away—I cannot remember what date—in 1997 in her 98th year, having been born on 27 June 1900, and she was the best recycler that I ever met. The second-best recycler that I ever met was Eileen Minnie May Plozza nee Brady, who was born in north-east Victoria, was part of a farming community and moved down to the Western District to Nullawarre. Those women in particular, especially early doors, did not necessarily have drivers licences. My grandmother Eileen certainly got one and she got herself around. But my grandmother Eva was born in Dunolly and then when she married moved to Greens Lane, Llanelly, and spent the greater amount of her life there. Throughout two wars and with no shops nearby, she recycled everything—absolutely everything.

I have been doing a bit of family history recently and I found this most magnificent photo of my dad and his brothers. I lost my dad when I was only 19. But there was this gorgeous photo of five of the six Green boys with Dad being the baby at the time, a little toddler. My grandmother was a seamstress, and she had made every single part of what they were wearing—their little ties, their little shirts, their shorts or suits, depending on how old they were. She had recycled that from my grandfather, my great-grandfather or my great-uncle’s clothing, and those boys just looked absolutely schmick.

The member for South-West Coast and I both went to St Ann’s College in Warrnambool and learned sewing. I have always been—

Ms Britnell interjected.

Ms GREEN: The member for South-West Coast says she was not any good at it. But I actually was not bad; I had good teachers but also came from a family of people that sewed. We were always repurposing things. My kids think I am a bit quirky, but I love making a pair of jeans into a bag or whatever, and I have just always had this thing of ‘You just don’t throw anything out’. It really came from my farming ancestors, because they knew that whatever they generated on the farm they had to dispose of, and whatever—

Ms Britnell interjected.

Ms GREEN: Yes, well, there is the op shop as well, as the member for South-West Coast said.

Representing the electorate of Yan Yean and living in the municipality of Nillumbik—they have been pretty forward leading. They are probably not at the cutting edge now, but they really were when they introduced the three-bin system. It was red, amber and green. They won awards for actually explaining to people which things went in what bin. I certainly was a figure of fun in my family with my children because there were cameras on the truck, and being a member of Parliament I was absolutely paranoid that one day someone was going to put something in the wrong bin and I would be in the newspaper. I was not worried about it just from that point of view; I actually am passionate about the environment, but especially being passionate about recyclable goods I did not want to be the one that was going to be in a newspaper or on the council’s website. And so my children just called me the bin fascist because I would get home from Parliament on a Thursday night and I would be straight to the bins, because that was bin night, in a mad panic of who had put what in the wrong bin. But hopefully that means that when they have gone on to their own households they have learned that these things are actually important.

Now, as the member for South-West Coast knows, I have a holiday house in Warrnambool, where we both grew up, and they have the fourth bin there—as the member for Mount Waverley discussed, the ‘Wiggles bins’. I call them the ‘Driveway Daleks’. We put two bins out one week and two bins out the other—we are not always there, so we have to rely on the neighbour to do it—but I know the minister at the table would really get how we work out which bins go out at what time. It is red and green one week and purple and yellow another, so one week it is Storm and the other week it is—

Ms Britnell interjected.

Ms GREEN: No, no. It is Storm. The other week it is Rabbitohs. So that is how we have worked it out, but that is our household.

Many others have talked in detail about the bill, but I really wanted to pay credit in particular to a fantastic business in the northern suburbs called Betta Stone. It is these sorts of businesses that are going to flourish within the Recycling Victoria framework and in our new economy. What Betta Stone are doing is not just about repurposing glass. We know that there has been a real problem with commingling of glass with tins and paper, so we have not had the best recycling of glass. What Betta Stone, based in Broadmeadows, does—and they employ primarily Indigenous labour, and I really want to pay tribute to Robert and Roshni Thompson for establishing this great groundbreaking business—is take powdered glass and turn it into aggregate benchtops.

Not only does this use recycled product, it also addresses one of the most serious threats to worker health and safety. Having had a stepfather that died of asbestosis it is something that I am really passionate about. Now we have the successor to that chronic and terrible workplace disease in silicosis. So with the Betta Stone product, having pressed glass powder into aggregate means that it can be cut on site and is a minimal risk to those who are working with it. So I really wanted to pay tribute to Betta Stone. I am looking forward to visiting Betta Stone in Broadmeadows next Thursday with the candidate for Broadmeadows, Kathleen Matthews-Ward, and the member for Thomastown, the Parliamentary Secretary for Workplace Safety. I commend the minister for her work, her staff and the department and I really commend this bill to the house.

Mr KENNEDY (Hawthorn) (18:57): In just a couple of minutes I will give you the gems of what I was going to say in these 10 minutes. What about if I just mention the government’s commitment to climate action and the many day-to-day ways in which we create a more sustainable Victoria. I am really admiring of that. I am of an age and stage—I think I am the eldest in both houses—where the environment and doing what you can in this field was not terribly strong as I grew up and grew older, but I really have a great admiration for governments and for others who take the trouble of specifying different coloured bins, of looking at policies and so on that will protect the environment and develop good policies for our children and our grandchildren. This Environment Legislation Amendment (Circular Economy and Other Matters) Bill 2022 I think represents in some ways a maturing of attitudes. Rather than saying it is all one thing, that idea of the circular economy is important, and this represents a good chapter in that development.

It is a policy that makes a lot of sense. I congratulate those in that department for their work. We are a government who puts our money where our mouth is on sustainability. It is more than the Climate Change Act 2017 and the over $2 billion invested in climate action; it extends to other sectors, to our massive investment in public transport and, as seen with this bill, to recycling. I am proud to be part of a government that is yet again doing the hard yards on environmental protection, this time through our recycling sector. I commend the bill to the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.