General Purpose Standing Committee No. 5

Debate resumed from 26 November 2008.Debate resumed from 26 November 2008.

Mr IAN COHEN [3.27 p.m.]: I contribute to this take-note debate on the 2008-09 budget estimates hearings as Chair of General Purpose Standing Committee No. 5, which examined the expenditure of a number of important portfolios, including Climate Change and the Environment, Commerce, Primary Industries, Mineral Resources, Energy, State Development, Water, Rural Affairs, Regional Development, Housing and Western Sydney. The hearings are an extremely important opportunity to gauge government performance and priorities in these portfolio areas. I would like to use this take-note debate to highlight some issues raised during these hearings that remain unresolved.

I refer first to the hearings on Environment and Climate Change—a portfolio near and dear to my heart. Both the Greens and the Opposition raised a number of issues on the Government's performance on waste avoidance and resource recovery. In particular, witnesses, including the Minister and departmental representatives, were called on to explain the lack of implementation of the extended producer responsibility [EPR] scheme in areas such as e-waste, plastic bags and televisions.

The general sentiment from the Government's end is that the vast majority of extended producer responsibility schemes should be implemented at a national level and that New South Wales is contributing to discussions on extended producer responsibility waste management strategies within the Environment Protection and Heritage Council [EPHC] framework. I find that galling and an exercise in responsibility shifting, which has been part and parcel of these issues for many years. National coherence on waste is important and the national waste strategy paper of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts will go some way to addressing the jurisdictional and responsibility issues that we face repeatedly when discussing resource recovery. The National Waste Strategy paper will also hopefully question the orthodox economic assumptions utilised by the Productivity Commission and the Office of Best Regulatory Practice that become a barrier to a proper economic assessment of extended producer responsibility-based waste management strategies.

While State governments are sympathetic to the argument for national action—certainly it would be great if that were to happen, which is an argument long used by the New South Wales Government on feed-in tariffs—the fact remains that State governments are responsible for waste management. New South Wales is the biggest State in the nation, and obviously we produce the greatest amount of waste. If State governments cannot agree at a national level, their constitutional mandate of waste avoidance and resource recovery should not be prejudiced or derogated. Instead of developing extended producer responsibility schemes that can be adapted into broader national schemes, the New South Wales Government has used the Environment Protection and Heritage Council stalemate to justify absolutely blatant, head-in-the-sand inaction. The principle of adaptive management—a principle so readily deployed by the Government when it does not want to be dragged down by State counterparts—is glibly kicked to the curb by a department so scared of proactive policy development on resource recovery.

Given the poor performance outlined in the Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Report 2008, I have a feeling this issue will continue to be discussed during this year's budget estimates hearings. We cannot continue to have the New South Wales Government collecting record levels of funding from the landfill levy without an accompanying obligation to reduce—

Pursuant to standing orders business interrupted and set down as an order of the day for a future day.