Page 3376 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 August 2008
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Following on from that analysis is the need for government to purchase goods made of recycled materials, wherever possible, and develop recycling and re-use performance targets for the construction, commercial and retail sectors. This proposal is simply to give further direction to the State of the environment recommendation b (iii)—“Developing and implementing a waste minimisation avoidance action plan with specific performance measures”.
Another part of my motion is to develop and implement a plan for green and organic waste, including a green waste kerbside collection service and onsite organic waste recycling scheme in new suburbs. I have heard the minister responsible for trash say that he believes that we would be interfering with the private sector if we did that. A very good idea might be to actually get the private sector to undertake this collection. Let us bring them in. Let us not make them an obstacle to a really good idea. We do need a green waste kerbside collection. Trash packs simply are not enough. This is one of those frustrating issues where the answer is so obvious and yet there is so little action.
The call from Canberrans to get a third green or organic waste bin is getting louder. We all know that Queanbeyan has had a green waste bin fortnightly kerbside collection for many years. Queanbeyan people are always one-upping themselves about it. Why are we letting private companies make the profits that could be made by the government to run the same scheme? Why not bring in the private companies to run the scheme?
We should also be looking at options for suburb level organic waste systems while we are developing new areas such as Molonglo. The mulch from this could be used for landscaping, which goes on intensely for many years in the early years of new developments.
Paragraph 3 (e) of my motion calls on the government is to develop a zero waste education facility. Mr Assistant Speaker, I do not know if you have ever been to CERES in Melbourne. It is the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies. It is actually situated on an old rubbish tip, which is an excellent use of an old rubbish tip, and people can go and learn to do all kinds of things, from mulching, composting, growing food, developing solar passive house design and so on.
We know there has already been a proposal for this in Canberra by the Australian National Sustainability Initiative, and Eastlake is the perfect place for this. They have already suggested as much. I want to see Eastlake developed like that. The ANSI proposal was chucked out in favour of another one and I want to see that that new one incorporates these ideas.
We need to include waste as a separate identifiable component of domestic and business rates, and that is covered by paragraph 3 (f) of my motion. We know that unless people can see the size of the waste component of their rates bills they do not have an incentive to reduce it. We also need to institute a regular collection of large household items to promote re-use. Second-hand Sunday just does not go far enough.
I would have liked to have seen more support for Revolve because it is a community-based recycling centre. If there were problems I would have liked to have
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