Environment
Morrison Government fails to ensure Commonwealth purchasing supports recycling
Wed 27 January 2021The only waste policy change this Government has delivered is the straightforward framework that formalises the ban other countries have imposed on Australia’s waste exports. Yet in the absence of both the infrastructure for increased recycling and the end market for recycled material Australia’s growing waste will inevitably need to be stockpiled or landfilled.
Read more...Nothing but throwaway announcements: Govt misses its own waste targets
Mon 21 December 2020With Christmas in four days, and the first waste export ban due to start on 1 January, the Morrison Government looks set to fail on the delivery of key targets within its own National Waste Policy Action Plan.
Read more...Report: ‘From Rubbish to Resources’
Wed 9 December 2020It is worth starting, when we look at this area understanding the state of play, we do have a waste crisis in this country. Other countries have decided in the last 18 months or so, perhaps a bit longer than that, that they’re not going to accept waste from Australia and that’s forced us all, and particularly the general public, to realise that we’ve been kidding ourselves a little bit when it comes to how we deal with waste and resource management to a significant degree.
Read more...Environment Minister must protect the environment
Mon 30 November 2020If it’s too much to ask that the government do their job when it comes to environmental protection, they could try to stop actively making it worse: stop cutting resources to the environment department; stop weakening our environmental protection framework; stop ignoring the reality of climate change; and stop undermining the efforts of Australia’s scientists and conservation sector.
Read more...Australia’s waste is up, recycling down in latest accounts
Thu 19 November 2020This month’s data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Waste Account shows that Australia’s waste and recycling performance has worsened at a time when the Morrison Government claims to be showing national and global leadership.
Read more...Heritage protection an all-round failure
Thu 12 November 2020The Minister needs to explain how from now going forward, if ever traditional owner calls her office, it doesn’t end up being a case of them being told you will get a phone call back from an advisor who’s on leave, who doesn’t get contacted, who never makes that phone call.
Read more...Government has no credibility on environment
Tue 27 October 2020We cannot keep putting our environment, our native plants and animals, into profit-yielding stress positions in the name of striking a ‘balance’. We’re in a situation of stark imbalance right now. And it’s getting worse.
Read more...Third time unlucky – still no funds applied to waste crisis
Tue 27 October 2020Almost a year since it was revealed that the Morrison Government’s signature election funding commitments on waste and recycling had gone nowhere, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) has again confirmed in Senate Estimates that the so-called $100m Recycling Investment Fund (RIF), which was simply re-labelled CEFC funding, has not advanced a single dollar.
Read more...Recycling and Waste Reduction Bills 2020
Thu 22 October 2020It’s easy to pretend that waste is not a massive environmental problem and a massive market failure. And to pretend that in any case, we’ll deal with it by a few nifty innovations, by asking business nicely, and perhaps, in some cases, treating business to a few stern words of encouragement. But we also know what’s hard. And what is hard is to plan and deliver serious and meaningful progress through reform on a national scale, because that requires leadership and action at the national level. And it means substantial change to the way we do things now.
Read more...It’s the waste that needs recycling, not the announcements
Thu 15 October 2020The truth is that plucking numbers out of the air is easy. Making the changes required to address Australia’s waste crisis requires leadership, effective policy, and programs that are actually implemented.
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