Senator McEWEN (South Australia—Government Whip in the Senate) (09:31): by leave—I present the seventh report of 2011 of the Selection of Bills Committee.

Ordered that the report be adopted.

Senator McEWEN: I seek leave to have the report incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The report read as follows—

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

REPORT NO. 7 OF 2011

1. The committee met in private session on Tuesday, 14 June 2011 at 7.27 pm.

2. The committee resolved to recommend—That—

(a) upon its introduction in the Senate, Schedule 4 of the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Further Election Com­mi­tments and Other Measures) Bill 2011 be referred immediately to the Economics Legis­lation Committee for inquiry and report by 22 June 2011 (see appendix 1 for a statement of reasons for referral);

(b) the provisions of Schedule 5 of the Tax Laws Amendment (2011 Measures No. 5) Bill 2011 be referred immediately to the Economics Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 21 June 2011 (see appendix 2 for a statement of reasons for referral); and

(c) the provisions of the Veterans’ Entitle­ments Amendment Bill 2011 be referred immediately to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 16 August 2011 (see appendix 3 for a statement of reasons for referral).3. The committee resolved to recommend—That the following bills not be referred to committees:

Acts Interpretation Amendment Bill 2011

Aged Care Amendment Bill 2011

Customs Tariff Amendment (Taxation of Alternative Fuels) Bill 2011

Energy Grants (Cleaner Fuels) Scheme Amendment Bill 2011

Excise Tariff Amendment (Taxation of Alternative Fuels) Bill 2011

Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Child Care Financial Viability) Bill 2011

Financial Framework Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2011

Higher Education Support Amendment (Demand Driven Funding System and Other Measures) Bill 2011

Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2011

Military Justice (Interim Measures) Amendment Bill 2011

Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Amendment (Registration of Foreign Proceeds of Crime Orders) Bill 2011

Navigation Amendment Bill 2011

Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Amendment (Oil Transfers) Bill 2011

Tax Laws Amendment (2011 Measures No. 3) Bill 2011

Tax Laws Amendment (2011 Measures No. 4) Bill 2011

Tax Laws Amendment (Medicare Levy and Medicare Levy Surcharge) Bill 2011

Taxation of Alternative Fuels Legislation Amendment Bill 2011.

The committee recommends accordingly.

4. The committee considered the following bills and, noting that they had been referred to committees pursuant to the order of the Senate of 12 May 2011, resolved to make no recommendation:

Family Assistance and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2011

Offshore Petroleum (Royalty) Amendment Bill 2011

Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Registration Fees) Amendment Bill 2011

Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (National Regulator) Bill 2011

Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Regulatory Levies Legislation Amendment (2011 Measures No. 2) Bill 2011

Offshore Resources Legislation Amendment (Personal Property Securities) Bill 2011

Social Security Amendment (Parenting Payment Transitional Arrangement) Bill 2011.

5. The committee deferred consideration of the following bills to its next meeting:

Public Service Amendment (Payments in Special Circumstances) Bill 2011

Responsible Takeaway Alcohol Hours Bill 2010.

(Anne McEwen)

Chair

15 June 2011

APPENDIX 1

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Schedule 4 of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Further Election Com­mitments and Other Measures) Bill 2011 (& related Government amendments)

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

Concerns of the insurance industry regarding the unworkability of the notification provisions and the disadvantage this may potentially cause injury compensation beneficiaries.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Insurance Council of Australia

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Senate Economics Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

Friday 17 June 2011

Possible reporting date:

22/6/11

(signed)

Senator Fifield

Whip/Selection of Bills Committee member

APPENDIX 2

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Tax Laws Amendment (2011 Measures No. 5) Bill 2011

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

Schedule 5 — Car fringe benefits tax rule changes

Possible submissions or evidence from: Council of Small Business of Australia

Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries The Tax Institute

Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia PricewaterhouseCoopers / KPMG

Australian Industry Group

Australian Chamber of Commerce arid Industry Motor Trades Assoc

National Farmers Federation

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Senate Economics Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

June / July

Possible reporting date:

Late July

(signed)

Senator Fifield

Whip/Selection of Bills Committee member

APPENDIX 3

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Veterans' Entitlements Amendment Bill 2011

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

To seek further information about the changes proposed by Schedule 2 of the Bill and enable feed­back from the veteran and ex-service community about the changes.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Australian Federation of Totally and Perman­ently Incapacitated Ex-Servicemen and Women Ltd

Australian Peacekeepers and Peacemakers Veterans' Association

Australian Special Air Service Association Australian Veteran and Defence Services Council Defence Force Welfare Association

Injured Service Persons' Association Legacy

Naval Association of Australia

Partners of Veterans' Association

Returned and Services League of Australia Royal Australian Air Force Association Royal Australian Regiment Association Vietnam Veterans' Association of Australia Vietnam Veterans' Federation of Australia War Widows' Guild of Australia

Wider veteran and ex-service community (incl. individuals)

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade

Possible hearing date(s):

During the Winter break

Possible reporting date:

First sitting week in August to enable consideration ahead of the implementation of time-critical provisions of the Bill (particularly Schedule 1 relating to payments for ex-Prisoners of War)

(signed)

Senator Fifield

Whip/Selection of Bills Committee member

Senator NASH (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (09:32): I rise to make some re­marks regarding the Higher Education Support Amendment (No. 1) Bill 2011. As people would be aware, FEE-HELP is available to eligible full fee paying higher education students and VET FEE-HELP is available to eligible full fee paying and certain state government subsidised VET students studying in higher level education or training, and provides a loan for all or part of a student's tuition costs. I think we all know in this chamber how important it is that we do continue to support our students in disadvantaged areas where they need that assistance and particularly in regional areas.

VET FEE-HELP was introduced under the former Howard government in 2007 recognising there was a need to encourage students to take up higher level skill qualifications by reducing the financial barriers associated with study. I am sure that colleagues would agree that over time the recognition of the VET sector has indeed increased and does play a very significant role in educating our young people today.

The bill will introduce a number of streamlining measures to the Higher Education Support Act 2003. This will streamline the process for the providers, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the program. There has been some concern in the sector that the difficulty in being able to access the program has acted as a disincentive. As I understand it there have only been a relatively small number of providers that have been part of this program and this piece of legislation aims to improve that accessibility. The coalition supports the bill, its effect being to improve the process and allow for a significant increase in quality education providers who apply for and are approved as providers under the act to be able to offer that FEE-HELP and VET FEE-HELP assistance.

I also note in the legislation the addition of the new requirement that bodies corporate seeking approval as either a higher education provider or a VET provider are 'fit and proper' for that purpose, which provides the appropriate level of scrutiny. I note also that the minister must specify, by legislative instrument, the criteria which must be taken into account in deciding whether a person is a fit and proper person before the body is approved. I think there is, on both sides of this chamber, the recognition that there was some need for streamlining this legislation. The efficiency that we will see as a result of the introduction of this legislation will make the process more workable and will allow more of those providers to be able to access this program which in turn is going to benefit the students. The priority for the coalition is to ensure that students are able to access that help as and when they can, and this legis­lation will certainly improve the efficiency and streamline the process in order for that to happen.

Senator McLUCAS (Queensland—Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) (09:35): I thank Senator Nash for her contribution to the debate and commend the bill to Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Marshall): No amendments to the bill have been circulated. Before I call the parliamentary secretary to move the third reading, does any senator wish to have a committee stage on the bill to ask further questions or clarify further issues? If not, I call the parliamentary secretary.

Senator McLUCAS: I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator FIFIELD (Victoria—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (09:36): I rise to speak on the Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Election Commitments and Other Measures) Bill 2011. This bill is a compilation of amendments across several areas. It seeks to give effect to a number of the government's election commitments. It includes amendments to the Social Security Act 1991, the Social Security (Adminis­tration) Act 1999, the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986, the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999, the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) (Administration) Act 1999 and the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. These amendments cover changes to the work bonus, family tax benefit part A, youth allowance, the baby bonus, the matched savings scheme and payments to Thalidomide Australia Fixed Trust beneficiaries.

This packet of measures is interesting because it appears that the government does see some election commitments as more equal than others. Another election com­mitment, which is well known to us all, was the Prime Minister saying, 'There will be no carbon tax under any government I lead.' For some reason the election commitments that we are talking about today are more worthy of honouring than that solemn pledge that the Prime Minister gave during the last election campaign. I think it is a good thing for governments to honour their election com­mitments, so it is good that the government is seeking to implement these, but it does put into stark relief that massive unprecedented election commitment not to introduce a carbon tax.

The bill that is before us seeks to extend the existing work bonus to enable people of age pension age or qualifying age who take up paid work, including occasional or variable work, to get more of their pension when they are working. The coalition raised in the past the issue of pensioners who worked in seasonal employment as Santas at Christ­mas time or as school exam super­visors and who had their pensions cut due to the receipt of short-term income. One case in Canberra has become quite well known. A man worked for a few weeks as a department store Santa Claus, having his photo taken with children, but, because of the increase in his income over that short time, he was then penalised in his pension. It is now readily conceded on all sides of the chamber that legislation should be encouraging people to work, not the opposite. The coalition have welcomed the changes to the work bonus. They are changes that we called for and changes that we proposed.

The bill also contains measures affecting family tax benefit part A. These amendments were taken from the recommendations of the Henry review. The Henry review put the case that family payments should be the main form of assistance for children aged up to 18 years or until the completion of secondary school in the year a person turns 18. These changes will raise payment rates for each eligible child aged 16 to 19 years so that they are the same as for those aged 13 to 15 years. This means that when a child turns 16 the family will not experience a drop in assistance. At present most low- and middle-income families experience significant reduc­tions in government assistance once their child turns 16. These amendments will have an effect on rent assistance as the increased rates for older children will make them eligible to be considered for rent assistance. At present rent assistance cannot be claimed for children aged 16 or over. The increased FTB part A payment for 16- to 19-year-olds in school or training will be $781 per year higher than the rate of youth allowance paid for 16- and 17-year-olds. The bill will position FTB part A as the main form of help offered to young people undertaking secondary or vocational education.

The matched savings scheme was introduced by Labor in 2009. It matches, dollar for dollar, savings up to $500 for people on compulsory income management. At present the MSS starts automatically for anyone on compulsory income management who starts a money management program. The changes proposed here will shift the onus onto the individual to claim for the MSS. Labor's matched savings scheme does have some early indications that it will not achieve the desired effect. The Australian reported on 16 March this year:

Only one person has received the full $500 available under the Gillard government's $53 million matched savings scheme for welfare recipients launched last July.

The article goes on to say:

Between July 1 and December 31, 102 people entered the scheme, and of these 53 completed the money management course, 36 were still doing it and 12 had dropped out. To date only one person has successfully completed both requirements and received a full matched savings payment.

It was only one at that time. I understand there have been a few more since then. But as the President of the National Welfare Rights Network, Maree O'Halloran, was quoted as saying:

The Matched Savings Account appears to be yet another one of the government's income management-linked policies that, it seems, is untried, untested and unpopular.

This bill also represents a lost opportunity to do some justice towards rural and regional students with respect to the youth allowance issue. This legislation amends the Social Security Act 1991 to preclude students aged 16 to 17 who are in full-time secondary or vocational education from receiving youth allowance unless they are considered independent, are living away from home or were receiving youth allowance immediately before beginning their course to ensure that youth allowance recipients are not adversely affected if one of their siblings remains in or transfers to the FTB system as a result of the changes to the FAA.

When this bill was before the House, Labor had the opportunity to admit that their position on Youth Allowance was wrong and support the urgent introduction of legislation to reinstate the former workplace partici­pation criteria for independent youth allowance to apply to students whose family home is located in inner regional areas. Labor changed the criteria for youth allowance last year, requiring inner regional students to work 30 hours a week for 18 months over two years. Not only are jobs offering these hours difficult to find in rural communities but some students are having to defer tertiary studies for up to two years. Trying to balance these hours with study is very difficult. The coalition are fighting to reinstate the former, fairer criteria for inner regional students, but to date our efforts have not been successful.

The coalition will not be opposing this bill. However, I would like to note again that, whenever Labor claim to be honouring election commitments, as they are here today, it will always be overshadowed by that great broken promise not to introduce a carbon tax.

Senator McLUCAS (Queensland—Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) (09:45): This Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Election Commitments and Other Measures) Bill delivers on three of the government's import­ant election commitments: improving sup­port for families, improving the delivery of the baby bonus for new parents, and better supporting pensioners who work. There is also a schedule that I am particularly interested in, and that is scheduled 4, which provides some amendment to payments for those people who were affected by thalido­mide, a group of people that I have been associated with for a period of time. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Marshall): As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall now call the minister to move the third reading, unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in the Committee of the Whole. As there has been no indication of that, I call the parliamentary secretary.

Senator McLUCAS: I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia) (09:47): The coalition will support the Tax Laws Amendment (2011 Measures No. 2) Bill 2011. This bill makes the following changes to taxation laws: it adds two organisations to the list of deductible gift recipients, namely, the Charles Perkins Trust for Children and Students and also the Roberta Sykes Indigenous Education Foundation. It also allows regulations to impose rules on self-managed super funds regarding personal use—collectables, paintings and so on. It will allow the use of tax file numbers as identifiers to locate super accounts and facilitate consolidation of accounts, while making changes to the way Australian taxes, fees and charges are made exempt from the GST.

I will just make a few comments in relation to some aspects of this bill, specifically in relation to changes to personal-use asset rules for self-managed superannuation funds. This provision allows the government through regulation to impose rules on self-managed super funds invest­ments in personal-use assets such as collectables and artworks. The sole-purpose test of the SI(S) Act requires that assets of a superannuation fund be held for the sole purpose of generating retirement income. The super system review, also known as the Cooper review, recommended that self-managed super funds should be prohibited from investing in personal-use assets and those held should be disposed of within five years. The review found that personal-use assets lent themselves to personal enjoyment and therefore failed the sole-purpose test.

The government announced on 3 July 2010 that it did not support the review's position but that it would tighten the requirements around investment in personal-use assets. These amendments allow the government by regulation to impose rules relating to investment of personal-use assets by self-managed super funds. Those rules can cover: artwork, jewellery, antiques, artefacts, coins or medallions, postage stamps or first-day covers, rare folios, manuscripts or books, memorabilia, wine, cars, recreational boats, memberships of sporting or social clubs, or assets of a particular kind if assets of that kind are ordinarily used or kept mainly for personal use or enjoyment, not including land. The coalition are of the view that the approach proposed by the government reflects a sensible balance. We are also aware that it is supported by the self-managed super fund industry body, SPAA.

In relation to the proposal to use tax file numbers as identifiers to locate super accounts and facilitate consolidation of accounts, this is of course part of the so-called 'super stream' proposals that came out of the Cooper review. The coalition very strongly supports the super stream related recommendations in that they will, through increased efficiencies, deliver real increases in value to superannuants and retirees across Australia. This provision allows superannuation fund trustees and retirement savings account holders to use tax file numbers to locate accounts and facilitates consolidation of multiple accounts. There are current restrictions on the way super­annuation funds can use tax file numbers. In particular they are not permitted to use tax file numbers to locate accounts for the purpose of consolidation. It does not replace account or membership numbers but removes the requirement that super funds use other methods of searching for multiple funds before using tax file numbers. An individual can still choose not to give their tax file number and there are no changes to the consequences for failing to do so. It is important in order to maximise individual retirement savings that smaller amounts are consolidated as early as possible. I pause here to say that, while we congratulate the government on having acted on this recommendation, the coalition are very disappointed that Minister Shorten has continued in his persistent failure to act on the Labor Party pre-election commitment to require the Productivity Commission to design a more open, transparent and competitive process for the selection of default superannuation funds under the modern award system. We have had a case study publicised in the media in recent days which clearly demonstrates the inevitable consequences of the type of closed shop anticompetitive process that was instituted by this government. Before the election, the government recognised that and said they would fix it. But the current minister—I would argue because he has a serious conflict of interest—is highly reluctant to act on that. The direct consequence of the minister's failure to act in relation to the selection of default superannuation funds under the modern award process by Fair Work Australia sees hundreds of thousands of Australians channelled into under­performing super funds, which means that the retirement savings of those Australians will be smaller than they otherwise would be. That is a direct result of the minister's failure to act.

Under pressure, the minister said he might start to look at this in 2012. The coalition says that is just not good enough. If a process is manifestly closed shop, anticompetitive, not open, not transparent and not competitive—and we know that it is not because the government recognised that before the election—if there is a process which is so broken that it leads to outcomes like the ones that were publicised in the media last week, it should be fixed immediately. There is no excuse for the minister not to act, other than that he wants to protect the closed shop arrangements for as long as he can get away with it so that more and more Australians are channelled into underperforming funds.

This comes on top of the minister's reluctance to act on a whole series of other Cooper review recommendations designed to improve the transparency and corporate governance arrangements in the superann­uation industry. Those recommendations include having independent directors on superannuation boards and requiring directors who want to sit on multiple superannuation boards to make a declaration to APRA, the regulator, that there is no foreseeable conflict of interest. These are the sorts of recommendations that go directly to the confidence that working families and retirees across Australia can have in the superannuation system. Only if we get the corporate governance and transparency arrangements right, only if we continue to ensure that our superannuation industry is as efficient, competitive and transparent as possible, will we have the assurance that the returns for families and retirees across Australia will be maximised.

I call again on Minister Shorten to reflect on his duty as a minister to act not in the vested interest of the union movement or other sections of the superannuation industry but in the public interest, in the best interest of working families and retirees across Australia. I urge the minister to have another look at the urgency of sorting out some of these issues, which are getting worse under his watch.

In this context, I also point to the current developments in Victoria, where merger talks between two superannuation funds are close to collapsing—they might well collapse in the next few days—on the basis that union representatives for one of the super funds have not been able to get a guarantee that there will be a continuation of union nominated positions in the merged entity and also because they are not happy to go along with the proposal for democratic elections of super fund boards in the future. Super fund trustees are required to act in the best interests of members in making judgments on whether or not a merger should go ahead. If, as has been reported, the merger in Victoria is going to collapse on the basis that some current super fund trustees have not been able to obtain a guarantee that there will be union nominated positions in the merged entity, that is not a decision, on the face of it, made in the best interests of members. It looks to me like a decision made on the basis of the self-interest of the current super fund trustees and the bodies they might think they are representing.

The provision in the legislation in relation to tax file numbers being able to be used as identifiers to locate super accounts and facilitate consolidation of accounts is a good step as part of a broader superannuation reform agenda, but there is a lot of unfinished business in this legislation if we are committed to ensuring that our super­annuation industry is as efficient, transparent and competitive as possible. I have touched on a few of the issues. There are quite a few more. I suspect that in the weeks and months ahead there will be serious debate and serious focus on the minister's and the government's failure to act on some of these issues despite clear and emphatic pre-election commitments.

This bill also deals with exempting Australian taxes, fees and charges from the GST. That is a rather straightforward proposition which we support. The bill makes various other amendments to tax laws which do not require any further discussion at this point in time. With those few words, I again confirm that the coalition will be supporting this bill.

Senator MILNE (Tasmania—Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (09:58): I rise today on behalf of the Australian Greens to support Tax Laws Amendment (2011 Measures No. 2) Bill 2011. I want to make some comments in particular in relation to schedule 2, which allows regulations to be made setting the rules for self-managed super funds investing in personal assets and collectibles, including art. The Australian Greens believe that artworks and other collectibles must continue to be legitimate investments for self-managed superannuation funds.

We were particularly distressed when the Cooper review into the superannuation system made a recommendation that self-managed superannuation funds no longer be allowed to invest in personal assets and collectibles, including art. The art industry in Australia was rightly concerned that such a blanket ban would adversely affect the art market in Australia. The Cooper review's recommendations would have had a considerable negative impact on the art market and would have been particularly detrimental for Indigenous artists. Super­annuation investments are worth almost $100 million per year to the art industry according to the Save Super Art campaign, and the recommendation by the Cooper review to dispose of currently owned art and the cessation of future investments means that the art industry would potentially face considerable instability and the income opportunities for artists would have been put at risk. The Indigenous art market, as I indicated, would have been greatly impacted by the Cooper review recommendations because, as we are all aware, there is a significant global market for Indigenous art, making it attractive to self-managed super­annuation funds and therefore creating an incentive for buyers with around 60 per cent of Indigenous art being bought through the self-managed superannuation funds.

This is a really critical issue. It is well-known in Australia that we value the arts, but we fail to support them. We support them in fairly small ways, with government grants, but being an artist in Australia is not a lucrative profession for most. We are all aware of how artists are supported in other countries. While I was in Copenhagen for the climate talks, I went to an artist village in the city. It had been built after the Second World War. Basically they built an area for artists to live where they were provided with low-rent accommodation providing they were engaged full-time in creating art. There was recognition that the Danish people value the contribution to the community and to the culture by the artists involved. Now it is quite a fantastic little area of the city because artists, over time, have contributed to it by creating sculptures and by painting various murals around. It really is a beautiful part of the city. I thought what a great contribution, what foresight the government had to build this village to support artists in this way because we know so many artists struggle to make a living from their art.

The same thing goes in this country. Most of us would agree that the capacity that Indigenous communities now have to make money from their artwork has been one very significant step forward for Indigenous people to be able to get income into communities where that previously had not occurred. The Greens in particular are cognisant of how important the art community is in Australia in reflecting to ourselves who we really are as a nation. We get told all the time how important the economy is, but it is the health of the society which we as a community ought to be concerned about and it is artists who pose the hard questions. You only have to go down and have a look at the new Indigenous art galleries at the National Gallery—they are quite fantastic; for those of you who have not been, I thoroughly recommend going—to see there are a number of confronting pieces in that exhibition which really challenge all of us to think about the way we have engaged with Indigenous communities and which challenge us to think about how serious we are about reconciliation and so on. It is incredibly important when thinking about something like changing the regulations for these self-managed superannuation funds that, in a desire to enforce the absolute test that the purpose of the investment is for superannuation income, we do not under­mine the income of the arts community around the country. There is a very strong recognition that the ban on investing in art will ultimately have resulted in harm to artists around the country because it would have eliminated the incentive to buy artworks and therefore decrease the market and therefore the returns to our visual artists in particular.

During the election campaign the Australian Greens joined with the Save Super Art campaign, calling on the government to reject the recommendation of the Cooper review and allow superannuation funds to continue to invest in art. The Save Super Art campaign was supported by numerous organisations, including the Australian Artists Association, the National Association for the Visual Arts and numerous art galleries. To the government's credit, it listened to the concerns of the campaign, it listened to the concerns of artists around the country. You can imagine what would have happened if the Cooper review recommendation had been taken up that the current owners had to dispose of their art straight away and cease any future investment. There would have been a complete collapse in the value of a lot of the works that would have been forced onto the market all in one burst. I am glad the government listened to those concerns and announced, again during the election campaign, that the government would not implement a ban on investing in art and other collectables but would move to clarify the rules surrounding such investments. The Greens do appreciate the need for investments by superannuation funds to comply with the sole purpose test under­pinning the superannuation investment regime. We do understand that the govern­ment is currently consulting on the draft regulations that will be made under the changes that will occur when this bill passes the parliament.

We do not want to presume the outcome of those consultations going on in the community at the moment, but we do know that there remain concerns about the restrictions that are being imposed on collecting art and other personal assets. One of the concerns raised by the Australian Artists Association includes the additional costs associated with storing art off the premises of parties related to the super fund, and the restrictions on leasing art, even when that art is leased at commercial rates to related parties. Again the issue here is to make sure it is a genuine superannuation investment. If you have made that investment and then you cannot have the enjoyment of that for yourself because it is regulated that you need to have it off premises or whatever, or if you lease it to a related party at a commercial rate, I understand that is still going to be a matter of grave concern to people in the arts community. I think that that might well constitute a disincentive on the part of self-managed superannuation funds to invest in art. I think artwork is different from other personal assets. We continue to talk these issues through with the government to make sure that the integrity of the superannuation system is maintained but also to ensure that art can continue to be a practical investment for superannuation funds and that such investments can continue to support our art industry. I want it very clearly on the record that that is the perspective of the Greens.

We must do everything we can to support artists out there now—artists who are relying on the fact that self-managed superannuation funds can collect art—to maintain the art market and provide an income. As I indicated before, Indigenous communities in particular are reliant on this. We have worked hard on the resale royalty scheme to start generating income for communities. In that context, we have argued strongly that there needs to be government funding to assist community art centres—and Indigen­ous community art centres in par­ticular—to be able to build capacity to handle all of the administrative work that is going to have to be undertaken in terms of the resale royalty regime and so on.

We do not have a history or a culture of philanthropy in Australia when it comes to the arts. Unlike other countries, where you have wealthy benefactors who put huge amounts of money into the arts in all sorts of ways, we find symphony orchestras and leading artists struggling. We do not have the culture, which does exist in other places, that takes on, if you like, patronage to emerging artists, supports them and creates opportunities for them. In other countries too, governments take a much more prominent role in supporting the arts than we have in Australia.

Some people argue that perhaps the community sees this as elitist, but I would question that. When I go around Australia I see the numbers of people who go to local exhibitions and local theatre. When an orchestra or the Australian ballet, for example, come to regional communities, they are patronised with great enthusiasm. An example I would put on the record here is the Burnie Gallery, on the north-west coast of Tasmania. They are a fantastic regional gallery. They have a large number of events and exhibitions, which are widely patronised and highly valued in that part of Tasmania. We have a thriving arts community in the state of Tasmania. But we do not have a community that is particularly wealthy, so we do not want to put disincentives in the way of people who want to support local artists through self-managed superannuation funds. We do not want to put a disincentive in the way of Indigenous communities to have ongoing benefit from the artwork which has been a significant contributor to improved income in remote and regional communities throughout Australia.

With those remarks, I support the bill. I look forward to engaging with the govern­ment further as the regulations are developed in relation to covering personal assets and collectables under self-managed super­annuation funds.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (10:12): I would like to thank senators who participated in this debate, particularly Senator Milne. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Marshall): No amendments to the bill have been circulated. I shall call the parliamentary secretary to move the third reading, unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole. There being no such indication, I call the parliamentary secretary.

Senator FARRELL: I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia) (10:13): The coalition will not oppose the Tax Laws Amendment (2011 Measures No. 3) Bill 2011. This bill makes the following changes to taxation laws. It provides a 12-month GST-free export period for new recreational boats from 1 July 2011. The measure is designed to assist Australian exports of recreational boats and amends the Income Tax (Transitional Provisions) Act 1997 to overcome a technical problem with the imposition of general interest charges in certain circumstances.

In relation to the provision of a 12-month GST-free export period for new recreational boats from 1 July 2011, the intended effect of the new provision is to provide a 12-month period within which new recreational ships can be exported from Australia as a GST-free supply. Under the existing law, a purchaser or the supplier must export the ship from Australia within a specified 60-day period, unless the period is extended by the commissioner, in order for the supply to be treated as a GST-free supply. Introducing this 12-month export period to apply to the supply of a recreational boat enables a purchaser of a boat to gain experience operating the boat in Australian waters before having to remove it from Australia. Sailing or motoring the boat out of Australia is expected to be the most common means of exporting, although there is no requirement for the boat to be exported in this way. In order for the supply of the boat to be treated as a GST-free supply there are two tests that must be satisfied. The ship must be a new recreational ship; it cannot be a substantially reconstructed boat, and it cannot previously have been sold, leased or used since the completion of its construction. And the ship must not have been used for any disquali­fying activities, such as carrying out a business. As I have mentioned, the coalition will not oppose this particular amendment.

Furthermore, this bill also amends the Income Tax (Transitional Provisions) Act 1997 to overcome certain technical issues with the imposition of general interest charges. The tax law imposes a general interest charge for the late payment of income tax and shortfall interest charge liabilities. The Tax Laws Amendment (Trans­fer of Provisions) Act 2010 rewrote and transferred the relevant general interest charge imposition provisions for outstanding amounts of income tax and shortfall interest charges from the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936—the ITAA 1936—to the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. The purpose of this rewrite was to remove any ambiguity in the provisions and, again, the coalition will not oppose it.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (10:15): I would like to thank Senator Cormann for his contribution in the debate, and I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Marshall): No amendments to the bill have been circulated. Before I call the minister to move the third reading, does any senator wish to have a committee stage on the bill to ask further questions or clarify further issues? If not, I call the parliamentary secretary.

Senator FARRELL: I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia) (10:16): The coalition will not oppose the Tax Laws Amendment (2011 Measures No. 4) Bill 2011.

This bill makes a number of changes to taxation laws. Schedule 1 sets the gross domestic product adjustment for pay-as-you-go instalment taxpayers at four per cent for the 2011-12 income year instead of eight per cent. This will allow taxpayers using this methodology to smooth their tax burden over the 2011-12 and 2012-13 tax years.

Schedule 2 removes the ability of children under 18 years of age to use the low-income tax offset to offset tax due on their unearned income. Schedule 3 allows a percentage of insurance costs for total and permanent disability policies that can be claimed as deductions by superannuation funds to be specified in regulations. Schedule 4 excludes from the reportable employer superannuation contributions definitions of certain employer contributions to superannuation made pursuant to a requirement that employees cannot influence.

As I have mentioned, the coalition does not intend to oppose this bill, and with those few words I conclude my contribution.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (10:18): I would like to thank Senator Cormann for his contribution to the debate, and I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Marshall): No amendments to the bill have been circulated. Before I call the minister to move the third reading, does any senator wish to have a committee stage on the bill to ask further questions or clarify further issues? If not, I call the parliamentary secretary.

Senator FARRELL: I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia) (10:18): The coalition supports the Tax Laws Amendment (Medicare Levy and Medicare Levy Surcharge) Bill 2011. This bill increases the Medicare levy and the Medicare levy surcharge low-income thresholds for individuals and families in line with increases in the consumer price index. Similar bills have been introduced by the previous coalition government and the current government in every year since 1996-97. The bill amends the Medicare Levy Act 1986 to increase the Medicare levy low-income thresholds for individuals and families. The dependent child student component of the family threshold will also be increased. These increases are in line with movements in the consumer price index. The bill also increases the Medicare levy low-income threshold for pensioners below aged pension age so that they do not have a Medicare levy liability where they do not have an income tax liability.

The bill further amends the A New Tax System (Medicare Levy Surcharge–Fringe Benefits) Act 1999 to increase the Medicare levy surcharge low-income threshold in line with movements in the consumer price index. The provisions maintain the thresholds for low-income earners, and not to provide this indexation would, in effect, be a tax increase for low-income earners and pensioners. As such, the coalition supports these changes.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (10:20): Once again, I would like to thank Senator Cormann for his participation in the debate. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Marshall): No amendments to the bill have been circulated. Before I call the minister to move the third reading, does any senator wish to have a committee stage on the bill to ask further questions or clarify further issues? If not, I call the parliamentary secretary.

Senator FARRELL: I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia) (10:21): The coalition supports the International Tax Agreements Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2011. Schedule 1 to the bill amends the International Tax Agreements Act 1953 to modify and streamline its structure. The act will be shortened by omitting almost all of the schedules to the act and instead incorporating treaties by reference to other accessible resources, principally, the Australian Treaties Series online database of treaties. This will substantially reduce the size of the act, and is a sensible housekeeping measure. Schedule 2 to this bill amends the International Tax Agreements Act 1953 to give the force of law in Australia to new taxation agreements with Aruba, Chile, the Cook Islands, Guernsey, Malaysia, Samoa and Turkey. The Aruba, Cook Islands, Guernsey and Samoa agreements cover the allocation of taxing rights and transfer pricing adjustments. The Chile, Malaysia and Turkey agreements cover the avoidance of double taxation and tax evasion. The legislation is representative of Australia's commitment to international agreements to avoid double taxation, codify tax allocations and combat international tax avoidance. As such, the coalition supports this bill.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (10:22): I once again thank Senator Cormann for his contribution to this debate and commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Marshall): No amendments to the bill have been circulated. Before I call the minister to move the third reading, does any senator wish to have a committee stage on the bill to ask further questions or clarify further issues? If not, I call the parliamentary secretary.

Senator FARRELL: I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia) (10:24): My understanding is that the Acts Interpretation Amendment Bill 2011 is a bill to modernise and reorder the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 and to make certain amendments to clarify potential ambiguities. The bill seeks to achieve those objectives by co-locating the definitions currently scattered throughout the act, placing the act's pro­visions in a more logical order, providing that an action by a minister other than the minister who is authorised to perform that action is not invalid merely on that basis and inserting a new section to confirm for the avoidance of doubt that the common law de facto officer doctrine applies. This will ensure that, if an officer has been invalidly appointed, acts performed by the officer in that position are not automatically invalidated. This doctrine was affirmed by the High Court in Cassell v The Queen (2000). The bill specifies that everything in an act that is enacted by the parliament should be considered part of an act, allowing meeting participants to be in different locations and to participate using technology such as videoconferencing. Lastly, it adjusts the definition of 'document' to include things like maps, plans, drawings and photographs.

My learned colleague Senator Brandis advises me that in 1993 the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs published a report on the drafting of Commonwealth legislation titled Clearer Commonwealth law. One of the committee's recomm­en­dations was that the Attorney-General's Department and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel should publicly review and rewrite the Acts Interpretation Act. In response the Attorney-General's Department and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel jointly issued a discussion paper entitled Review of the Commonwealth Acts Interpretation Act 1901 in 1998. Following consultation on the discussion paper, a number of recom­mendations were made to improve the usability and readability of the Acts Interpretation Act.

As is clear from the history, the amendments to this legislation have been a bipartisan project over several years and several governments. The act is an important part of the machinery of Commonwealth legislation to which recourse will often be had when seeking to resolve ambiguities or divine the technical meanings of acts and regulations. Accordingly, the coalition supports the bill.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (10:27): I thank Senators Cormann and Birmingham for their contribution to the debate. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Marshall): No amendments to the bill have been circulated. Before I call the minister to move the third reading, does any senator wish to have a committee stage on the bill to ask further questions or clarify further issues? If not, I call the parliamentary secretary.

Senator FARRELL: I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia) (10:28): It is a pleasure to speak on the Product Stewardship Bill 2011. This bill establishes a national framework to support voluntary co-regulatory and regulatory product stewardship and extended producer responsibility schemes to provide for the impacts of a product being responsibly managed both during and at the end of its life cycle. Through these measure it is hoped, including on this side of the chamber, that the environmental, health and safety impacts of products, particularly those impacts associated with the disposal of products, will be more effectively managed.

The commitment to establish this national framework, underpinned by the legislation before us today, was made by the govern­ment in its November 2009 National Waste Policy: Less Waste, More Resources statement. This National Waste Policy has been endorsed by all Australian governments at state and territory level, through both the Environmental Protection and Heritage Council at the time, in November 2009, and COAG in August 2010.

The coalition fully supports the principle of product stewardship being, as it is outlined in the National Waste Policy:

… the shared responsibility for reducing the environmental, health and safety footprint of manufactured goods and materials across the life cycle of a product.

The bill itself offers a subtly different definition from the National Waste Policy, namely that it is:

… an approach to reducing the environmental and other impacts of products by encouraging or requiring manufacturers, importers, distributors and other persons to take responsibility for those products.

I know this has been a long work in progress and work that has involved certain sectors of industry along the way. I am well aware that some sectors of industry are particularly enthusiastic to see this legislation passed. I especially note the national TV and computer sectors, who have a proposed national TV and computer product steward­ship program that we would expect, from the advice that both industry and government gave us during the negotiation phase, to be one of the first out of the starting blocks. This program already has members representing 70 per cent of total imports of computer brands into Australia and 80 per cent of sales in Australia. The TV and computer scheme obviously is of particular importance as we move through the phases of the switch over from analog to digital signals and because of the increased volume of the already significant supply of electronic waste that those industries will generate.

Importantly, the coalition is particularly supportive of the bill providing for voluntary product stewardship schemes, as set out in part 2 of the bill. These sit alongside the requirements and opportunities for co-regulatory and mandatory product stewardship schemes outlined in the bill. Part 2 of the bill establishes a mechanism to encourage and recognise product steward­ship without the need to regulate and also to provide assurance to the community that any voluntary product stewardship scheme is operating to achieve its stated outcomes, and it authorises the use of product stewardship logos in connection with these arrangements.

The Global Product Stewardship Council, an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to understanding and advancing the principles of product stewardship, says that in its experience, as reinforced by overseas participants in the International Product Stewardship Summit, Australia has had greater success with voluntary programs than many overseas jurisdictions have. It also says:

Stakeholders are more likely to collaborate on and effectively implement voluntary and/or regulatory approaches than where approaches are in unilaterally mandated.

And that:

Approaches requiring greater levels of regulation should be pursued only after market-based, voluntary and co-regulatory approaches have been clearly shown to be relatively ineffective in achieving desired outcomes.

These are principles that the coalition would support and would urge and expect the government to keep in mind during its application of the powers that this legislation provides for. We do expect that where industries are able to deliver effective voluntary schemes then that is exactly what all sides of politics in this country would like to see.

The peak body for Australia's lighting industry, Lighting Council Australia, have several months experience in administering their own voluntary product stewardship scheme. They say:

The industry ownership bestowed by a voluntary or co-regulatory approach should lead to better outcomes among industries prepared to assume such responsibility. To reduce costs on both industry and government, all efforts should be made to encourage voluntary rather than regulatory approaches.

However, this bill does provide for all three—voluntary, co-regulatory and mandatory—schemes. There is a place for all three, particularly in terms of the capacity to bring in recalcitrant parts of industries to ensure that the bill has a universal effect. Under the bill, accreditation of voluntary schemes will be on a cost-recovery basis through a fee for service.

I will spend a moment addressing some of the concerns that have been highlighted during consideration of this legislation. A Senate inquiry was held, as is customary, and I thank those who participated in that inquiry: the witnesses; the committee staff, as always, for their detailed report; and my colleague Senator Fisher, who engaged particularly effectively in this inquiry to examine some of the issues and concerns that industry and other groups had. We heard a range of concerns, some of them relating to the consultation approach, some of them relating to the expected effectiveness of the scheme and some of them relating to the potential for industry to be roped in or surprised by its inclusion in the scheme.

In many ways, we heard extreme views—from those who feared that all industries may suddenly find themselves subject to a mandatory scheme, at one extreme, and those who believed that the legislation was ineffectual and would achieve absolutely nothing at the other extreme. Those two extremes perhaps suggest that there is a middle way, and the legislation maybe has found that middle way. Nonetheless there were specific concerns raised about a range of factors, in particular concerns about the criteria as well as industry concerns about an element of surprise that theoretically could exist for industries to be roped in under the scheme.

I am very pleased that we have been able to work through this legislation and issues such as the criteria. A range of amendments standing in the name of the government, the Greens and the opposition have been circulated in the chamber. These have been worked on in a collaborative manner. I thank Senator Ludlam and Senator Farrell for their work, as well as the officers of the department who have worked with Senator Farrell and all parties to ensure that we can come up with some sensible amendments that we hope go some way to appeasing some of the concerns. Importantly, the amendments that will be moved will provide for a new definition of the product stewardship criteria—a definition that is, I think, less open-ended than the definition provided for in the bill as it stands and that ensures that criteria, though I suspect still relatively easy to meet for industries that genuinely should be included in such a scheme, are at least a bit more of a hurdle to ensure that you could not come up with a scenario where almost any product of any industry could fit or meet the criteria as they were previously drafted.

We have also put in place some provisions that will ensure that there is a degree of forewarning about products that the government is looking at or considering. So the government will, under the amendments proposed, be publishing lists of products being considered for accreditation or regulation under the act. There will be a committee established—a review mech­anism—to ensure that industry and key players in this sector all have some degree of input. These are important changes that we believe will provide at least for a greater level of involvement and consultation and hopefully a stronger outcome of industry confidence and participation in this scheme.

As the government confirms in the explanatory memorandum for this bill, the product stewardship criteria are only one factor in determining whether regulations, co-regulatory or mandatory, can be made with respect to a class of products. There are two other considerations in addition to the criteria. One is that the bill requires that the minister be satisfied that making the regulations will further the objects of the act, and again that is a factor that has been reinforced time and again during discussions and deliberations of the committee and behind closed doors about how this bill will function.

Second, and I think particularly important, is the requirement—of which the government assures us throughout the explanatory memorandum and in the parliamentary secretary's second reading speech—that, as a matter of government policy, the usual regulatory impact assessment requirements would also apply. This is very important. This is not a factor that is detailed in the bill. It is, however, a factor that has been used time and again as reassurance. I would invite the parliamentary secretary, when he makes some remarks in this debate, again to provide that assurance from the government as to what will underpin that regulatory impact assessment process so that this debate has those issues clearly on the record, especially given that the website of the Office of Best Practice Regulation within the Department of Finance and Deregulation simply explains that a regulatory impact statement is required under the Australian government's requirements. That is one of those nice circular statements. We, of course, would just like, for the sake of conclusion in this debate, to ensure that the government's expectations and understanding of how that regulatory impact statement arrangement will work in this legislation are made clear so that all those who may be dealing with it in years to come have a clear record to refer back to in that regard.

Lastly, I just raise another matter that I invite the parliamentary secretary to respond to and that I have foreshadowed with him. Very late in the inquiry into this bill, the Senate committee received a late submission from the Law Council of Australia—the Intellectual Property Committee of its Business Law Section—concerning the creation of product stewardship logos under the voluntary product stewardship provisions. As the committee did not have an opportunity to consider in detail the issues raised but simply drew it to the government's attention, I would invite the parliamentary secretary to provide advice on how the government has considered that issue and what advice he has received from the Attorney-General's Department or others about its relevance.

In closing, I once again express my thanks to all parties for their cooperation on this and restate the coalition's commitment to this scheme, to the principle of product stewardship and, importantly, to our belief that wherever possible these should be schemes driven and owned by industry to make sure that they have genuine stewardship of their products throughout the life cycle.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (10:42): I also rise to make some remarks on the Product Stewardship Bill 2011 on behalf of the Australian Greens. This is framework legislation that arises from COAG agreeing that the federal government and the states and territories should together establish a national framework to support voluntary, co-regulatory and mandatory product steward­ship and extended producer responsibility schemes to responsibly manage the enor­mous quantities of waste that Australians are generating. This national approach is the kind of policy infrastructure that is necessary to separate contaminating products and valuable products and massively reduce our landfill.

Facts and figures about how we currently handle our waste stream make the case as to why this measure is well and truly overdue. As I have said in committee hearings time and again, on this issue and on related issues that I will touch on, this is a policy portfolio for patient people. This really seems to have taken an inordinate amount of time to come to fruition, and I would like to congratulate the parliamentary secretary for steering us through these final phases, because this is genuinely well overdue. It is often very difficult to detect a sense of urgency amongst policymakers where waste is concerned, because of course historically it has been cheaper to simply dump our trash on a pile than to do something about the extraordinary waste of resources and, of course, the contamination at landfill sites, greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and so on that result—the hidden costs of the enormous profligacy of our consumer society. So it is good to at last be able to say that we can detect the faint stirrings of urgency. Australia uses over 12 billion beverage containers a year, for example. Only about half of those are recycled. Most of the remainder wind up as litter or in landfill. More than four billion plastic bags are given out at supermarkets. Barely any of those are recycled. Four million tonnes of packaging is used and discarded every year. Australians accumulate 18 million used tyres every year. Approx­imately four million tyres are landfilled every year, despite each tyre containing recyclable quantities, up to 1½ kilograms, of steel, half a kilogram of textile and seven kilos of rubber. And instead of responsibly dealing with our tyres, roughly 11 million, or about 60 per cent of them, are exported to Vietnam and China, where they are recycled—if you could call it that—under appalling labour conditions with really quite harmful environmental and public health impacts. In a portfolio where the crossbenches and the opposition support the moves that the government is making, I might call Senator Birmingham's attention, before we go too much further down the track of celebrating the importance of the RIS process, to the fact that this is one instance where a regulatory impact statement was undertaken. Through a process of arcane number-crunching, the economists decided that it was not worth bothering setting up any kind of product stewardship framework for tyres, so now we dump them in countries in our region where they are burnt and 'recycled', with enormously harmful conse­quences for host populations. So I think we need to be extremely cautious before we simply hand over the kind of policy-making decisions we are elected to provide to people with spreadsheets who will just plug a formula in and then two years later a result will fall out that says, 'Don't bother.' That is what happened in the instance of tyres.

Mobile phones, of course, are another nightmare. We have about 24 million in circulation in Australia as at 30 June 2010 in the hands of 70 per cent, or thereabouts, of Australians. They get replaced very often. I am convinced somewhere within each mobile phone there is a piece of software that says, 'Just before the next model is due to hit the market, this one will start getting flaky and then drop dead.' Again, that is a part of our consumer society that we need to draw attention to. We are getting very used to just taking these devices on and then, 20 minutes after they have been released, we feel like we are falling off the back of the curve and we turf them, and they wind up in landfill. Eighteen months to two years is the speed of product turnover in mobile phone markets. There are about 16 million old handsets in cupboards and drawers in Australian homes. Each one of these phones contains substances that we could contemplate as either being extremely hazardous, such as cadmium, lead, nickel, mercury, lithium, arsenic, or being valuable, such as metals like gold, silver and copper and plastics that can be shredded and reused as well.

The MobileMuster is a voluntary scheme, and here again is one example of why we had better be careful before we simply assume that the best solution across the board is for industry to just take care of these things itself. I appreciate the efforts of the people behind the MobileMuster. They have got 3½ thousand collection points around Australia and people can recycle their mobile phones by post. But the fact is—and the minister might like to contradict this figure, but it is the figure I have—we have about a five per cent recovery rate in that voluntary scheme. That is another way of saying we have a 95 per cent non-recovery rate of phones that find themselves in landfill or just wind up in drawers for all time, not being recycled and that material lost to us.

From November 1998 to 30 June 2010, 724 tonnes, including five-and-a-bit million handsets and batteries, were junked. Quite a bit of that can be recycled from the old mobile phones. The nickel in the batteries can be recovered, as can the gold and silver in the circuit boards, and the handset housings and casings can be used to make fence posts, pallets and other things that we make with recycled plastics. I was interested to read in the MobileMuster annual report that one tonne of mobile phone circuit boards can yield the same amount of precious metals as 110 tonnes of gold ore or 123 tonnes of silver-bearing ore and 11 tonnes of copper sulphide ore. So these things are valuable and we need somehow to figure out how to recover that material, and this obviously goes further than just what happens at the end of life. We need to look at the design and manufacture of these devices in the first place so that they are designed to be more easily disassembled. As one of the witnesses to the committee said, even if all the mobile phones that are being stored came out for recycling, MobileMuster does not have the infrastructure to take hold of those and recycle them. I will return to this as an interesting example where the industry has taken on itself to try and do the right thing, but it has not been sufficient, you would say, to actually come to grips with the overall scale of the problem.

Where there is better news is in the area of televisions, computers and so on, involving Product Stewardship Australia and the Australian Information Industry Association, which Senator Birmingham touched on. There we have industry peak bodies that have taken the lead based, I understand, on moves overseas. We are in a global market here and other countries are moving ahead. This is one quite clear-cut example where you can say industry has led from the front in requesting that the government take on and regulate for the entire industry so that people who want to do the right thing are not being competitively disadvantaged by free-riders. It looks as though we are in the process of getting that one right. There were 16.8 million televisions, computers and peripherals that died in 2008. Eighty per cent of those went to landfill; about 10 per cent were recycled. As the digital switchover occurs, as the NBN rolls out, and we know we are undergoing an enormous face of technological innovation in Australia at the moment, that pile of electronic or e-waste is only going to grow into a mountain. That is why it is good to notice that a focus on TVs and computers is welcome as the first scheme, otherwise we would be debating effectively empty legislation—a container bill with nothing in it. But we know that we do have an example of how this framework legislation will be used, and that is welcome.

If we do not get going with that properly, e-waste in Australian landfill will triple by 2020 and be close to 700 million items. That is an extraordinary waste of this material that we all know can be quite transitory as product cycles accelerate. As it is, there are 18 million TVs and 70 million computers and peripherals in landfill or on their way to landfill. These constitute about 38 per cent of current e-waste items in landfill. We know that we need to deal with items like fluorescent tubes, some of which contain mercury, and items like batteries that find their way into landfill and then pose enormous problems with water contam­ination as water percolates through the landfill piles and into local watertables. There is a good news story here about how many jobs, for example, would be created if we dealt responsibly with our waste. The Boomerang Alliance stated that a national recycling scheme for all e-waste would create 5,100 new jobs by 2015. That includes 1,440 direct jobs in the recycling of e-waste and another 3,660 indirect jobs. As Senators will know, I have been pushing for quite some time for a national container deposit scheme to handle the 12 billion beverage containers that are used in this country. If we put monetary value on those containers, we would see many fewer of them end up in our waterways, parks and bushland. So, just as we propose to tax carbon emissions so that the market suddenly sees a price signal on something that we do not want to throw away, we would be placing a tiny premium on the beverage container to give them an economic value. That, in effect, would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by nearly one million tonnes of CO2 per year. That is the equivalent of switching 135,000 homes to 100 per cent renewable energy. All that is based on is the 50-odd per cent of beverage containers that at the moment find their way into streams, the side of the road and landfill, the stuff that we buy, use and discard when we are away from home where recycling rates are obviously very poor. It is about bringing those into the system and recovering those materials—a million tonnes of CO2 per year.

It would save enough water to perman­ently supply more than 30,000 Australian homes. Because we would no longer be discarding the stuff, we would be getting those materials back. It would deliver air quality improvements equivalent to taking 56,000 cars off the road and create approximately 1,000 direct jobs. Our bev­erage containers made up, we are aware, of about 60 per cent of all glass items, 47 per cent of metal items and about a third of plastic items during the 2010 Clean Up Australia Day. Nine out of the top 10 items collected on that day were packaging materials which made up about 80 per cent of all waste collected. This is a huge volume of material at the moment simply going to waste.

There is broad, consistent and very high support in the community for a container deposit scheme. There is a demonstrated willingness to pay. The study was done twice, and now we are buried in the swamp of a regulatory impact statement process being undertaken by the Commonwealth on container deposits that simply has this proposal buried in quicksand. It is not good enough. At best, we think this could result in a scheme being implemented in four years time. Thanks to this analysis paralysis, we have to get faster and better and develop a sense of urgency when something is so obviously a good idea. For every 12 months that we drag our heels on this, another 12 billion beverage containers are used.

On 25 January this year, Northern Territory Chief Minister Paul Henderson put out a blazing press statement calling on the beverage industry to stop their misleading campaign against the cash for containers legislation. It is one of the sharpest pieces of language I think I have ever seen come out of a Premier's or Chief Minister's office where he said that the beverage industry should simply stop wasting its money on deceptive advertising to stop it. How different the situation is when we have got the industry peaks in the case of e-waste, computers and TVs backing a scheme and demanding coherent legislation for their sector and so of course things are moving. The case of the beverage industry could not be in starker contrast where they have dug their heels in and progress has been painfully slow because of the deceptive conduct of the beverage and packaging industries. I still do not completely understand why the hostility is so stark.

I have put these figures on the record to make the point that national approaches to our national waste crisis are very much needed. We have historically had a very weak response to this issue in Australia. We have got litter campaigns which are valuable: they marshal volunteers and get people out to pick material up. We have got industry-led voluntary programs that are limited in extent and need some kind of coherent framework and approach.

The main industry government program is of course the Australian Packaging Covenant, which sounds great but it does not really deliver as much as industry seems to think, despite what we continually hear about in the course of various pieces of committee work that have contributed to this debate. We acknowledge the benefits of the APC, but I do not think they are as great as some in industry believe that they are.

We still have very serious concerns at the extent to which voluntary schemes are emphasised at the expense of mandatory schemes in this bill. I know there is some kind of reflexive opposition on the coalition side to forms of mandatory regulation where a voluntary industry scheme might serve us better. We believe that the amendments that have been jointly negotiated between the Greens, the government and the opposition will sharpen the distinctions between the three kinds of schemes that this bill seeks to bring into force.

We know that if a voluntary program has sufficient resources and organisational capacity then infrastructure can be developed and the outcomes can be very strong. What this bill, I think, will do with a bit of goodwill—and I am happy if the minister wants to confirm this—is put some teeth into the voluntary schemes. Let's hear what the targets are and, if they are not being met, then let's review them and assess whether a scheme should maybe shift from being voluntary to co-regulatory. If a co-regulatory scheme is letting us down, then let's assess if those targets are failing to be met; let's move it up to a mandatory scheme.

Co-regulatory programs work when the industry wants them to, and I am very happy to give credit where it is due to the television and computer industry who obviously want to do something about their waste, as I say, driven by international imperatives to bring our extraordinary waste production under control.

We have worked with the government to ensure that the bill does not use federal powers to extinguish good state schemes. I would hate to see, for example, a defective container deposit scheme get up that squashed the good work that has been done in South Australia over the last 30 years or the initiative taken by the Northern Territory. We will be asking the government, when we drop into the committee stage, to clarify how that is going to work.

We have also worked constructively to address an issue that came up during the committee inquiry into the bill regarding the need for the minister to have some guidance and input from experts to help identify priorities and monitor progress and next steps. I think that is something that every single witness who came before the committee said should happen and I am glad that we have government and, I think, opposition support for those amendments by the Australian Greens to set the priorities. Such an advisory panel existed to guide the New South Wales product stewardship legislation. The independent committee in New South Wales was made up of experts, non-government organisations and industry reps. That was involved in establishing a list of priority products so that industry knew where the system was going and the prioritisation process was transparent for the community. That advice was offered on an ongoing basis.

We will also, when we get to the committee stage, make amendments to the objects clause of the bill that we think is very important, and I will discuss that shortly. I would like to thank the committee for its excellent and very useful report that provided a very useful distillation of the waste crisis in our country. We perhaps take our committee staff here for granted from time to time because of how regularly they astound us by their professionalism and efficiency but this report, I think, actually stands out. I would also like to thank the non-government organisations who work very hard in an, I suppose, unglamorous area of waste policy. It is work that is nonetheless extraordinarily important for the larger project of creating a genuinely sustainable Australia, for cleaning up our act, for cleaning up our fouled waterways, our parklands and our wilderness from rubbish and for recovering those valuable materials that go to waste.

I would also like to acknowledge my colleague in Victoria Colleen Hartland MLC, who I think today is reintroducing in the Victorian parliament her bill on container deposits because she shares the frustration of many people in this place that the Commonwealth has simply decided to bury a national container deposit scheme under endless reviews and analysis. Colleen my colleague in the Victorian parliament and her office have done an enormous amount of work in building support in Victoria for a state scheme. I still think that a national scheme is the right way to go and I suspect that industry would prefer a coherent set of regulations that applied across the country, but I really strongly commend Colleen Hartland MLC for bringing her bill forward to simply get on with the job of getting containers out of waterways and verges and into recycling centres where they belong.

One of the great benefits of a container deposit scheme is that it would mandate and fund the creation of a network of neighbourhood recycling centres. Once you get those up and running for beverage containers initially they become the drop-off point for batteries, fluorescent tubes and other objects that we might find intractable that simply end up in landfill.

I would again like to congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water, for the constructive way in which he has approached this bill. It is always good to get an exposure draft of a bill so that you can see where a particular area is headed. I would like to thank all sides for the constructive spirit in which negotiations were entered into for this bill. It is a rare bit of good news. I would like to see this, very strictly speaking, as the first step of many. This simply sets us up with a framework which will be free to succeed or fail depending on the amount of effort and energy that is put into it. I look forward to discussing some of these matters in greater detail in the committee stage and indicate that the Greens are happy to support the bill.

Senator FISHER (South Australia) (11:02): Now you would not necessarily know it from the title of the Product Stewardship Bill but, yes, this bill is largely about waste and largely about the management of it. So why have we wasted so much time in getting to this point? Why have we wasted so much time when the Howard government supported the concept of a national scheme to reduce the impact on the environment and on health and safety of products and substances during their life and then at the end of their life? The Howard government supported that principle and that concept yet it is some years upon years later that we finally find ourselves in this place in the noncontroversial section of the legislative consideration hopefully poised to give passage and implement such a scheme.

Why has it taken so long? Why have we wasted so long in working out what to do nationally with our waste when, for example, the television and computer industry, largely composed of manufacturers and importers wanting to do the right thing, has recognised that we still use TVs with hazardous substances in them and we need to take TVs and computers off the footpath and get them out of landfill? That industry is one that has been working for a long time towards an industry resourced national scheme. The unnecessary distress caused to that industry and its largely well-meaning and hardworking people, when it needs some legislative enablement to get its scheme up and running before the end of this year, because this government has left its run until the 11th hour is indeed regrettable.

We know that we are about to be at a happier place in terms of the bill. Thanks to the departmental officers, and Ms Kelly Pearce and Dr Wright in particular, for their constructive engagement with us as members of the opposition, under of course the fine tutelage of the Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water, Senator Farrell. Thank you for your consideration of our views but also those views of industry. Taking so long in the gestation of what to do with our waste, the government claimed it had extensively consulted with industry last year culminating in the putting out of the discussion paper, which the government tried to say resulted in a whole lot of submissions as the precursor to this bill. The problem is that the government dumped—talk about waste—this bill in the House of Reps in March this year without having the forethought, the preparedness to release an exposure draft of the bill. It dumped the bill on the House of Reps in March and then thankfully, it decided to refer it to a Senate committee for inquiry.

But having referred a bill of that sort to a Senate committee inquiry without the benefit of an exposure draft, the man in the street would not know what product stewardship is when it is at home. Most people would not know. The man in the street would not know it if he fell over it. So it was all very nice for us to get excited as members of the Senate committee and say, 'Whoopee, we are having an inquiry into this bill, so it will all be sorted.' The trouble is even some of the stakeholders involved in the process through government last year were caught unawares by the inquiry and indeed the relevance of this bill to them and their industries. Product stewardship has existed as a term, no doubt, in the industry, bureaucratic and probably government vernacular for quite some time but, as I say, the normal man or woman in the street would not know it if they fell over it. The Senate Environment and Communica­tions Legislation Committee inquiry heard from a range of witnesses, who did realise that product stewardship had some consequences for them and their respective industries. They drove home mainly two messages: firstly, that the criteria that a product or substance has to meet before being able to be subject to the voluntary co-regulatory or mandatory regime set up by the bill were so wide you could drive a truck through them—the department did a very brave job giving evidence and suggesting that the criteria were filters, but in my warped interpretation of the English language filters reduce things that come through the other end and the trouble with these criteria is they do none of that—and, secondly, the bill gives industry no practical place to start. It potentially says that every product and every substance under the sun—indeed, every product on the supermarket shelf, so said witnesses—is potentially subject to this bill. Those in industry want to do the right thing, but they know not where to start as the bill gives no suggestion—in the language of some witnesses, 'Pick the low-hanging fruit; please suggest where we might start.' It leaves industry swinging in a stewardship wasteland.

Thankfully, following the Senate inquiry, as I said, the government has taken quite some note of the Senate committee's report and that has resulted in discussions taking place. It also resulted, very importantly, in belated consultations with industry stake­holders including between the government and industry stakeholders. For example, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry became far more involved in consideration of the bill and was able to contribute constructively in where we find ourselves today.

In looking forward to supporting the bill and supporting a range of amendments that have been tabled and circulated, I also hope that the government will learn some lessons from this process. This should be and will be not only a bipartisan but a tripartisan or a quadruple-partisan policy. It is a good thing, but just because something sounds good does not mean that it will do good unless you make sure that you implement it the right way. That means—please, government, and please, Senator Farrell—that the message for your colleagues is explain things to the people, to the stakeholders, consult with the stakeholders and do as the Prime Minister says: let the damn sunshine in. We are all deprived of vitamin D these days, did you know? Let the sunlight in; do not leave it to the last minute to consult with those who could help you achieve a constructive outcome.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (11:10): I thank all the contributors to this debate on the Product Stewardship Bill, particularly Senators Birmingham, Fisher and Ludlam. I noted the complimentary remarks from Senators Fisher and Ludlam, but really the credit should go to my staff and also to the people from the department, Diana Wright and Kelly Pearce, who have worked so hard to ensure that this legislation passes the parliament. It is reassuring that we have had such strong support and such strong cooperation from the opposition and the Greens so that we get a more effective and consistent approach to reducing the impact of products and hazardous substances in products on the environment and on human health.

Senator Birmingham raised a couple of issues, which I would like to specifically address. The first related to the regulatory impact statement. The bill sits within a strong governance framework that encourages consultation and evidence based decision making. Before any decision to regulate a product can be made, a regulatory impact analysis is required. As explained in paragraph 19 of the explanatory memoran­dum, this is both government and COAG policy. The regulatory impact analysis is a robust process that articulates the problems to be addressed. It assesses not only the economic but also the social and environ­mental benefits and costs in taking action to address a particular problem. There is no preconception that a particular solution like product stewardship is the best approach; a range of options is considered.

The impact analysis process typically involves significant consultation. For example, the television and computers con­sultation regulatory impact statement was released and public meetings were run—also a requirement to publish the results of this process. Once a decision to regulate is made, taking into account the impact analysis in section 17, the Legislative Instruments Act requires consultations on the regulation.

Senator Birmingham raised the letter that the Law Council sent to the committee. The letter raised the issue of use of the logo to support accreditation of voluntary schemes and, in particular, the interaction of the bill with the Trade Marks Act. In essence, the Law Council's concern was that the bill duplicates elements of the Trade Marks Act dealing with what are known as certification trademarks. These provisions in the Trade Marks Act allow, for example, a body like the Heart Foundation to register the Heart Foundation tick and certify that certain goods meet the Heart Foundation's standards. I have sought advice from my department and, through the department, from IP Australia on this matter. I am advised that the bill complements rather than duplicates the Trade Marks Act provisions. In fact, it is anticipated that the product stewardship logo would be required as a certification trademark under the Trade Marks Act, which I hope answers Senator Birmingham's question. Without any further discussion, I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (11:14): The first amendment that the Australian Greens will move on sheet 7078 is a very simple addition to the objects clause in the Products Stewardship Bill 2011 to make explicit that the scope of product stewardship legislation should rightly be:

(c) to contribute to reducing the amount of virgin resources used in products by preferencing recyclate.

I would have thought that was a reasonably commonsense thing to insert in a bill such as this to make absolutely explicit what this is about.

This bill seeks to do a number of things. In respect of the recovery of material and taking this material out of landfill, what we are trying to do here is then plug that material back into product cycles. I think there is a very well understood principle of industrial ecology or cradle-to-cradle product cycles, which says that if you are recovering valuable materials you want to then close those loops and plug that material back into the product cycle so that you are actually reducing the impact of manufacturing in the first place on the raw materials and on the virgin materials that we mine, chop down, refine and so on. So we wish to put a clause into the objects section of the bill because we believe a very important part of the whole enterprise of recycling and encouraging responsible products stewardship is that it reduces the amount of materials being drawn on to create the product in the first place. While the bill will not have a huge impact on the front end of creating the products, and I understand that is not specifically its intention, it is mostly focused on the end of pipe—it is focused on waste and what falls out of the system.

One overall, quite obvious and uncontro­versial aim I would have thought of doing this work is to impact on the way these products are made in the first place. That is obviously a piece of legislation for another day and, if anything, that is even more complex than what we are contemplating here. But I do not think that there is any harm at all—quite the reverse—in inserting a clause into the objects of the bill that at least tips the hat and acknowledges the fact that as we are in the business today in this parlia­ment of recovering materials in the first place, that those materials then be used at the front end. We are trying to encourage recycling. We believe that it should have an intent of impacting on the way that products are made in the first place, so we can take the first tentative steps in Australia towards a closed-loop economy or closed-loop product cycles.

I am happy to speak more on this perhaps once I have heard the views of the opposition and the government on this amendment, and I move Greens amendment (1) on sheet 7078:

(1)   Clause 4, page 7 (line 30), at the end of subclause (3), add:

   ; and (c)    to contribute to reducing the amount of virgin resources used in products by preferencing recyclate.

[objects]

Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia) (11:19): This amendment by the Greens to add clause (c) to the objects of the Product Stewardship Bill 2011 is certainly a well-intentioned amendment and the spirit of the amendment is in some ways difficult to disagree with. Certainly it is a statement that we would hope would be an outcome ultimately of product stewardship schemes in the operation of this act and that there would eventually be, as a result of product stewardship schemes, a reduction in the amount of virgin resources used in product through a higher use of recycled materials. That is something we would hope and expect. This bill will provide for product stewardship schemes that will see, we would hope and expect, an increase in the amount of materials recycled at the end of product, and obviously those products or those materials will be recycled into some other products and will be a substitute for virgin resources.

However, we do not see that there is a need to add this extra part to the objects of the bill, and we do not see that there is a need for a couple of reasons. The objects as they currently stand certainly do not exclude this as a point of consideration. Subclause (1)(a) of the objects is to reduce the impact that products have on the environment throughout their lives and subclause (1)(b) is to reduce the impact that substances con­tained in products have on the environ­ment and on the health and safety of human beings throughout the lives of those products. Neither of those subclauses exclude, I think, what Senator Ludlam is attempting to achieve by virtue of paragraph (c). Indeed, both are relatively broad.

I would make the additional point that of course there are some circular aspects of this act in terms of the way products are accredited for their application. To have a scheme accredited, to have a product stewardship scheme applied, there is a criterion where the minister deems that doing so will meet the objects of the act. That means, that in addition to the product stewardship criteria, which we will debate in a second, the objects are one of the two tests. Obviously, if you inserted paragraph (c) to the objects, there would be a new, additional test for consideration. I suspect that this would not be Senator Ludlam's intent, but it would be possible that, in the way the bill is written at present, all objects would have to be met for something to be accredited, and that would mean that paragraph (c) would have to be met along with paragraphs (a) and (b).

That may not be the case for some schemes that people would wish to accredit. In fact, in particular, when we were working through the product stewardship criteria, we found the importance of issues around hazardous substances and the need for this bill to comply with Australia's international obligations in the treatment of hazardous substances. These are not necessarily substances that will be recycled, and certainly not substances that will be recycled in a manner that would displace the use of virgin resources in making other products. This is simply a way of ensuring that a scheme is in place for the safe and sound management of hazardous substances. I think there is a potential risk that by inserting the proposed paragraph (c) as one of the objects we could create a trip-up within this legislation that would impede its effective operation.

For the reasons that we think the intentions are good but they are by no means excluded by the existing objects and we think there could be some inadvertent issues with the operation of the bill were it to be passed with this amendment, the coalition will not be supporting the amendment. But we hope and expect that, as I said, the sentiments in the amendment are an actual outcome of the operation of this legislation.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (11:24): I indicate that the government is not supporting this amendment. We have had extensive negotiations with both the Greens and the opposition and we are of the view that the amendment is already implicit in the objectives concerning the promotion of recycling and the reduction of waste. For that reason, we will not be supporting this amendment.

Senator FISHER (South Australia) (11:25): In addition to the shortcomings identified by Senator Birmingham, I will identify a couple of further ones within this very well-intentioned amendment moved by Senator Ludlam. I am sure that the Greens, and Senator Ludlam in particular, know what is meant in the amendment when it refers to reducing the amount of virgin resources used in products by preferencing recyclate, but neither 'virgin' nor 'recyclate' are terms that are defined in the bill. No doubt the Greens have a concept of 'virgin resources'. Indeed, Senator Hanson-Young once did an advertisement, I think, around that concept, but in a slightly different context. So, whilst the Greens might be clear on what they mean by 'virgin resources' and 'recyclate', those terms are not defined in the bill. That would add additional uncertainty and potential unintended consequences, as Senator Birmingham outlined. The amendment is very well intentioned, but we will oppose it.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (11:26): You know you are in trouble when you get called 'well intentioned'. That was when my heart sank. I thought perhaps there would be a last-minute change of heart. I would be delighted to work with coalition senators on definitions. Senator Fisher is correct that these are not terms of art—they are not defined in the bill. They are concepts that are very clearly understood in the industry, in the waste management sector in particular. If Senator Fisher feels that some definitions would improve the drafting, I would be more than happy to work up some language to make her happy.

I want to draw the chamber's attention back to when this issue was addressed by the committee as it was evaluating this bill. A number of organisations, particularly Keep Australia Beautiful New South Wales and the Total Environment Centre, raised significant concerns with explicitly men­tioning this. I suppose I have to disagree with both the comments of Senator Birmingham and the parliamentary secretary that these objectives are implied in the existing objects of the bill, because of course the existing objects of the bill refer principally to what happens at the end of life of the materials that we are discussing. They are silent, as they are on many other issues, on the implied consequences of creating new product streams, new resource streams, of material that we are capturing rather than simply throwing away.

For example, Keep Australia Beautiful New South Wales highlighted that one of the ongoing trends in the production of modern goods is their reducing life span. I addressed this in my speech on the second reading in the context of mobile phones. Quite an important part of the enormously increasing waste volumes that we are subject to and are trying to come to grips with here today is this concept of planned obsolescence, the throwaway or consumer society, where it is seen as a very good marketing strategy to get your customers to throw goods away so that they have to buy the new ones that you have produced. That is directly at odds with all sane objectives for creating a sustainable society. It would not matter so much if they were contemplating goods that were essentially biodegradable, completely harmless and made from recycled materials in the first place, but of course, in the instance of mobile phones and so on, that is absolutely not the case. Mobile phones are packed with toxic materials, valuable metals and so on that we would seek to recover. We would seek not to stockpile them in a warehouse but to reuse them. Keep Australia Beautiful New South Wales made the point very clearly that modern consumers will simply throw a product onto a kerb side for council to clean up and buy a brand-new one because the parts are too expensive or too difficult to find. We know in the field of consumer electronics in particular that things that are made these days are designed not to be repairable; when something goes wrong you are supposed to turf it. That is quite a troubling feature of our consumer society. Keep Australia Beautiful highlighted in their submission that when you produce any type of product, there is a set amount of energy and resources that are used and the longer the product is used, the better return on the embodied energy and input of resources. If you can make something last twice as long, its impact, its footprint if you will, is obviously half as heavy. They recommended that the objects of the act be amended to ensure that the lifespan of a product be considered for its impact on waste streams in the environment.

As you will see from the language that we have proposed, we did not quite go there. But we did simply want to insert a paragraph that acknowledges the importance of closing those loops. The Total Environment Centre, who have done an enormous amount of valuable advocacy on this issue over many years, argued more strongly for language that we effectively lifted and proposed—that is, that we should be making a contribution to reducing the amount of 'virgin resources used in products by preferencing recyclate'. It does not go as far as to raise the concerns that Senator Birmingham spoke of—that is, that various products streams will find themselves at odds with this object of the bill if all you were seeking to do, for example, is simply to remove hazardous waste for which you have no further use. It is a contribution to reducing the amount, and I do not think we would face the problem of particular product streams falling foul of the object of the bill when it is worded as generally as that.

The committee report says:

The TEC argued that in addition to the benefit of limiting the amount of new resources used in creating a product, expanding the objects of the Act would have the effect of encouraging the domestic recycling industry …

This is something that is tremendously important that is continually missed in the processes of doing the regulatory impact statements. TEC told the committee:

You create a market for the recyclate and that leads to very significant economic benefits. The fact is that for every tonne of waste that goes to landfill there is one job, but if you take it right through the whole processing and manufacturing system and include that recyclate in a product you create nine jobs.

That is modelling that the Total Environment Centre and some of their colleagues in the waste management industry have been promoting for many, many years—that is, it is more labour intensive but less capital intensive to simply close some of these product loops in the first place.

The committee noted those concerns and came to the view, as I think the minister has stated, that the objects of the bill, while silent in this particular aspect, imply that we should reduce the impact of these virgin resources and instead be preferencing recyclate, for both environmental reasons and sound economic reasons. If you can plug these materials back into product cycles, then again you have created an economic value for them that the market will see, will take note of and will overall reduce the footprint of material cycles. I invite the coalition, if they will, to sharpen the definitions of the materials that Senator Fisher observed are not terms addressed or acknowledged specifically in the bill, and I commend this amendment to the chamber.

Question negatived.

Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia) (11:34): I move opposition amendment (1) on sheet 7081:

(1)   Clause 5, page 8 (lines 1 to 34), omit the clause, substitute:

5 Product stewardship criteria

      The product stewardship criteria are satisfied in relation to a class of products if:

   (a)   the products in the class are in a national market; and

   (b)   at least one of the following applies in relation to the products in the class:

      (i)   the products contain hazardous substances;

      (ii)   there is the potential to significantly increase the conservation of materials used in the products, or the recovery of resources (including materials and energy) from waste from the products;

      (iii)   there is the potential to significantly reduce the impact that the products have on the environment, or that substances in the products have on the environment, or on the health or safety of human beings.

Note:   Whether the product stewardship criteria are satisfied in relation to a class of products is relevant for determining whether:

   (a)   to accredit a voluntary arrangement in relation to that class of products (see subsection 13(3)); or

   (b)   regulations can be made under this Act in relation to the class of products (see sections 19 (co-regulatory product stewardship—liable parties for class of products) and 39 (mandatory product stewardship requirements)).

[criteria]

This amendment seeks to replace section 5 of the bill. Section 5 outlines the product stewardship criteria and was a section that was the subject of intense debate and concern during the Senate committee inquiry into this bill. As drafted, section 5 'Product stewardship criteria' states that the criteria are satisfied in relation to a class of products if two or more of a range of paragraphs apply. Those paragraphs are, in some cases, quite broad when compared to the objects of the bill that we have just been discussing. These criteria, as drafted, include a statement that 'the products are in a national market' and a statement:

… taking action to reduce those impacts will offer business opportunities that would make a contribution to the economy.

They would have been two criteria in the bill that would be satisfied, and obviously for those who looked at it and thought this was an extremely broad way to apply criteria and a way that did not necessarily ensure that criteria were applied to ensure that the overriding intention and objects of this bill, which of course are to reduce environmental impacts, to better conserve materials and to ensure an increase in recycling, were the core criteria that had to be met with regard to the legislation.

As I did in my second reading debate speech, I thank the government in particular as well the Greens for working with us on redrafting these criteria and coming up with a tighter, neater form of criteria for the bill, which I believe the amendment does. The amendment provides that products will meet the criteria. Firstly, they must be in a national market and, secondly, they have to meet one of three other criteria. The first, namely that they contain hazardous substances, relates to some of the issues I discussed in regard to Senator Ludlam's amendment. Of course there are chemical substances that we do wish to better regulate and better manage the treatment of, either by Australia's own initiative or as a result of compliance with international obligations, and this legislation could provide a framework to do so. The other two criteria relate very specifically to the objects of reducing environmental impact, achieving better re-use of materials or conservation of materials and minimising the impact or use of those virgin materials that we were just discussing. The other two parts a product category would have to meet have been drawn from the words used in the original section 5 to ensure that we have not thrown the baby out with the bathwater in regard to all of the good consultation that the government did with industry and others with regard to working through the types of words and phrases. But they do ensure that products regulated by this legislation will have to significantly increase the conserva­tion of materials or significantly reduce the impact that the products have on the environment or on health or safety.

So we have very clear tests now. There are essentially three ways for a scheme to be accredited under this legislation: the products contain hazardous substances; there is the potential to significantly increase the conservation of materials used in the products, or increase the recovery of resources from waste from the products; or there is the potential to significantly reduce the impact that the products have on the environment, or that substances in the products have on the environment, or on the health or safety of human beings. These are three very distinct criteria. Under the amendment, one of them will have to be met. I know that it does not totally satisfy all of the concerns of industry or of those who wanted a very prescriptive criteria standard to apply, but I think it provides a far more certain criteria framework, a very clear test that has to be met. In applying that test, the parliament can have far greater confidence that this bill and the operation of this bill and the application of regulations under this bill will actually achieve what we all believe to be the objects of introducing a product stewardship bill.

I commend the amendment to the chamber. I thank in advance the other parties for their cooperation. This amendment works in tandem in a sense with some other amendments that form part of a package that we have all agreed upon to ensure better operation of this bill and of course to ensure the passage of this bill. I will be happy to address any other issues that may be raised by Senator Ludlam or the parliamentary secretary.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (11:40): I indicate at the outset that the Australian Greens will be supporting this amendment. When it was first proposed, or perhaps when some of the arguments were being tested during the committee process, I had some strong concerns about where the coalition was heading. Senator Fisher, I think, raised on a number of occasions the idea that ultimately product stewardship frameworks could be applied to nearly anything at all. Senator Fisher and other coalition MPs at the time were stating that with a sense of horror, as though it would be a terrible thing if many products which are familiar and in everyday use were to be discarded and then find their way into this framework legislation at some stage. I fail to see why that would necessarily be a bad thing.

The coalition, however, argued in their additional comments that the product stewardship criteria be reworked. I will acknowledge that every witness, with the exception of the department, who came in front of the committee said it is very difficult to detect where the government is heading with this. No priorities have been set. We have no idea whether this is intended to cover the field. How do we know that you are going to go after what some described as the low-hanging fruit or whether you are going to tie us up in going through regulatory impact statements and so on for products that are not necessarily at the top of the list for a product stewardship scheme?

So we are convinced that there are grounds for this. We welcome this amend­ment. I acknowledge that we fought for a little while over the term 'significantly'. I think if that ends up being addressed as too harsh a test by the government—and I invite the parliamentary secretary to address this issue specifically—we may end up finding that nothing finds its way into the scheme, if we are not careful. I know that that is not the government's intention. But I also acknowledge the way that some of the witnesses put this; we are in effect taking it on trust that the political will is there to move products into this framework so that we can actually start to reduce waste volumes in a serious way.

We support criteria that capture all of the potential products that might be appropriate for a scheme like this. I understand the opposition's intention is not to needlessly exclude products that we could usefully pull out of landfill or off the side of the road. They need to have clear meaning. I think it was successfully argued by coalition senators that indeed nearly anything at all could have found its way into this framework. That contributed to the unease expressed by people in industry and by non-government organisations that work on improving waste policy—opposite ends of the spectrum. There was no sense at all about where the government was going to take this.

In evidence given to the committee, Mr Jeff Angel from the Total Environment Centre was asked whether ministerial discretion would set appropriate boundaries or whether in fact this framework would end up applying to every substance and every conceivable product. He said:

What in this bill makes it apply to everything? On paper everything; in practice potentially nothing, as I have outlined.

We could set this framework up and, if it were not for the good work that is being done in the e-waste area, I would be very sceptical as to the value of this bill at all. Mr Angel went on to say:

So it will be somewhere in the middle, or somewhere closer to not very many.

That is: not very many product streams are going to find their way into this framework. He continues:

Knowing how government processes work, how government regulatory assessments work, how industry negotiates and how we have had to work on the various committees, in reality it does not apply to everything. Frankly, I think it is the sort of fiction that puts the bill in a completely wrong perspective and light. What legislation makes everything happen unless it says that everything is going to come under it? It is a discretionary exercise and discretion in ministerial and government terms is very bounded.

That is from the point of view of groups like the Total Environment Centre, which are obviously concerned to see the maximum value and the maximum benefit gained. In some contexts, that might mean that a very wide variety of products wind up in this scheme.

The Australian Food and Grocery Council took a slightly different perspective on it during the same hearing, but effectively arrived at the same conclusion. Mr Mahar from the Australian Food and Grocery Council said:

… based on the broad interpretation. While we support that, our concern is that it leaves too much scope opportunity for secondary regulations to be made in relation to a range of products that are not necessarily compatible with product stewardship schemes or do not lend themselves to arrangements, mandatory or otherwise, that can be implemented under that bill. In our view the criteria currently in the bill are too broad, too wide and too numerous to allow any certainty for business.

Somewhere between those two perspectives there is a range of views that I think all witnesses were very consistent on, which said, 'We need a process here for a prioritisation,' and the coalition, I think, took the view that one way of guiding the government's discretion in that area is to narrow the range of criteria to which this kind of scheme can apply. We think that that is entirely appropriate.

We will support this bill, but I would seek for the minister, in his remarks before we close debate on this amendment, to address his understanding of the term 'significantly' as the government intends it to apply to the way that the criteria will be used.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (11:46): I indicate that we support this amendment and that it was part of the extensive negotiations that occurred between the various parties which resulted in a consensus about the legislation.

Just on the issue that was raised by Senator Ludlam: the criteria, as amended, do tighten the test for the coverage of a product, whether it is voluntary or regulatory. We would expect that there would be sufficient discretion within the words, for example, 'potential to significantly increase the conservation of materials' to allow for most of what the witnesses referred to as the 'low-hanging fruit' to be covered. That answers your question, and I indicate that we support the amendment.

Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia) (11:47): Just to add to the issue: Senator Ludlam is right to highlight that in the discussions about these amendments we had a discussion about the significance of the word 'significantly'. Indeed, we did have some debate. In fact, when first drafted—

Senator Fisher: Significant debate!

Senator BIRMINGHAM: It was not a 'significant' debate, Senator Fisher, but nor was it an insignificant debate. It was a good moderate discussion.

When first drafted, we actually had inadvertently placed the word 'significantly' in, I think, part B(2) but not in part B(3) or vice versa. We then had to have the discussion as to whether to apply it as a test to both or to neither. In the end the coalition felt it is important to apply it to both. We would not want to see a situation where, especially, co-regulatory or mandatory schemes were put in place if there were only a marginal benefit. I guess that is where we would draw the distinction. We do not see that 'significantly' is a gargantuan test to leap over, but we see it as a way of making sure that we are not entering a realm where it is within the scope of this legislation to apply schemes that would only be of negligible or marginal benefit rather than of a reasonable or significant benefit.

In the end, once all of the low-hanging fruit—to borrow Senator Farrell's words—is picked, then if there is good argument and scope to revisit these definitions I am sure the parliament will be happy to do so. But I suspect it will be quite a period of time before that harvest and bounty is picked. These definitions, as applied, and the use of the word 'significantly' will ensure that we have consistency in the definitions and will ensure that where schemes are being applied they do actually make a difference; a tangible difference that people can see and that will therefore will help to improve the support and embrace of those schemes.

Senator FISHER (South Australia) (11:50): Obviously, in speaking in support of the amendment I look forward to it enabling the picking of more than just low-hanging fruit. Indeed, feeding into the low-hanging fruit part of the equation is probably best achieved by amendments which we will discuss shortly.

This is tightening the criteria so that they can indeed do as Dr Wright suggested was the government's intent during the inquiry into this bill—that is, to filter. The amendment ensures that the criteria now filter the flotsam and jetsam, if you like, of products and substances which otherwise could have been subject to this bill.

It was not quite the projection of mass hysteria implied by Senator Ludlam that came from some witnesses about the confusion that could result from the fact that the bill, in its current unamended termin­ology, could apply to every product and every substance. But there was significant concern, and for good practical reason. There is no point in having criteria or words in a bit of legislation if they are so wide as to cover everything and to be meaningless. Just as it is a waste to have words in legislation to that end, it is also a waste for any government, as would have been the consequence with the bill in its current terms, to potentially leave industry uncertain about the targets of a particular piece of legislation and the product stewardship regulatory regime which would result.

The government of the day will need the arms and legs of industry to get this cracking. You have only to look at the television and computer industries to see that. We are not going to get TVs off the footpath and out of landfill without the industry, be it in that case a co-regulatory scheme that is being proposed or be it in other sectors mandatory, co-regulatory and/or voluntary. Whatever the mechanism and whatever the means, the government of the day is going to be best placed to achieve its wishes with the cooperation, support and hard work of industry, and you had best get that, Temporary Chair Hutchins, as you would know from your hardworking days prior to coming to the Senate, from industry by getting them onboard on day 1 and getting them understanding and involved in the point that you are aiming at. So these amendments are good.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (11:53): I was ultimately persuaded by arguments that coalition senators raised on the use of the word 'significantly', and I will ask the minister in a moment about where he sees this process going from here. I visualise the fact that anything that would lead to insignificant recovery of materials or recycling would not be worth anybody's while, so we were happy that that test remains in there. But I wonder whether, for the benefit of the chamber but also for the industry and the various sectors that will be intimately affected by the operation of this when it becomes an act, we could be told where this is heading next. What are the priorities? What are the low-hanging fruit? Where is this whole process going? At the moment, we have been speaking, apart from the instances of TVs, computers and so on, mostly in the abstract. I am interested in knowing where the parliamentary secretary sees this process going once this legislation clears the parliament.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (11:55): There is the procedure that we are going to go through in a minute with some of the other amendments to advise industry about what future products will be included. We have set up a mechanism to deal with that. That was all part of the discussions that we had. There will be a number of products which I think are likely to come on the radar very soon. The first is tyres. I think fluorescent lighting and packaging will be issues that will come up in the very near future. Of course, our priority is to ensure that we get the TV and computer program up and running. That is going to be our immediate priority.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (11:56): I thank the minister for that answer. So as not to tie the chamber up, so we can move through the remainder of the amendments that we have, can the minister point me to somewhere on his website or the department's website—or indicate whether such a document exists as part of the COAG process—that has a list of what the various product types are. The parliamentary secretary named a couple at that point. Are they intended to be voluntary, co-regulatory or mandatory schemes? What recovery targets are anticipated for each of those product streams? When would they proposed to be met? I am not suggesting that the minister necessarily detail that unless he has that information at the table right now, but I would be very interested in knowing whether such a document exists in the first place and whether the parliamentary secretary and the officers at the table would undertake to create such a thing.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (11:57): My understanding is that such a list does exist on the EPHC website. It is available there. But I will get that confirmed for you.

Question agreed to.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (11:57): by leave—I move Australian Greens amendments (2) to (4) on sheet 7078:

(2)   Clause 6, page 9 (after line 9), after the definition of administrator, insert:

Advisory Group means the Product Stewardship Advisory Group established by subsection 108B(1).

[Advisory Group]

(3)   Page 92 (after line 27), after clause 108, insert:

108B Product Stewardship Advisory Group

Establishment(1)   The Product Stewardship Advisory Group is established by this subsection.

Function

(2)   The Advisory Group's function is to provide advice to the Minister:

   (a)   at the Advisory Group's own initiative—in relation to the performance of the Minister's function under subsection 108A(1) (products being considered for accreditation or regulation); and

   (b)   when requested to do so by the Minister—in relation to the performance of the Minister's functions under this Act.

Further provisions about the Advisory Group

(3)   Schedule 1 contains further provisions about the Advisory Group.

[Advisory Group]

(4)   Page 93 (after line 20), at the end of the bill, add:

Schedule 1—Product Stewardship Advisory Group

Note:   See subsection 108B(3).

1 Membership of Advisory Group

(1)   The Advisory Group consists of the following members:

   (a)   at least 5,and no more than 9, members appointed under clause 2;

   (b)   a Chair appointed under clause 3.

(2)   The performance of the functions of the Advisory Group is not affected by reason only of the number of Advisory Group members falling below 6 for a period of not more than 6 months.

2 Appointment of members of Advisory Group (other than the Chair)

(1)   An Advisory Group member (other than the Chair) is to be appointed by the Minister, by written instrument, on a part-time basis.

Note:   The Chair of the Advisory Group is appointed under clause 3.

(2)   A person must not be appointed under this clause unless the Minister is satisfied that the person has appropriate qualifications, knowledge or experience.

(3)   Before appointing a person under this clause, the Minister must consult with:

   (a)   one or more groups from among each of the following:

      (i)   groups with technical and scientific expertise;

      (ii)   industry and business groups;

      (iii)   environmental groups;

      (iv)   consumer groups;

      (v)   groups representing local government interests; and

   (b)   State and Territory governments.

(4)   An Advisory Group member appointed under this clause holds office for the period specified in his or her instrument of appointment. The period must not exceed 3 years.

Note: For reappointment, see the Acts Interpretation Act 1901.

3 Appointment of Chair of Advisory Group

(1)   The Minister must appoint a person (other than an Advisory Group member appointed under clause 2) as the Chair of the Advisory Group, by written instrument, on a part-time basis.

(2)   A person must not be appointed as the Chair of the Advisory Group unless the Minister is satisfied that the person has appropriate qualifications, knowledge or experience.

(3)   The Minister may, by written instrument, appoint an Advisory Group member to act as the Chair:

   (a)   during a vacancy in the office of Chair (whether or not an appointment has previously been made to the office); or

   (b)   during any period, or during all periods, when the Chair:

      (i)   is absent from duty or from Australia; or

      (ii)   is, for any reason, unable to perform the duties of the office.

Example:   The Chair would be unable to perform the duties of the office if required not to be present during a deliberation by the Advisory Group, and not to take part in any decision of the Advisory Group, under subclause 8(4) or (5) (disclosure of interests to Advisory Group).

(4)   Anything done by or in relation to a person purporting to act under an appointment is not invalid merely because:

   (a)   the occasion for the appointment had not arisen; or

   (b)   there was a defect or irregularity in connection with the appointment; or

   (c)   the appointment had ceased to have effect; or

   (d)   the occasion to act had not arisen or had ceased

4 Remuneration

(1)   An Advisory Group member is to be paid the remuneration and allowances (if any) that are prescribed by the regulations.

(2)   The office of an Advisory Group member is not a public office within the meaning of the Remuneration Tribunal Act 1973.

5 Leave of absence

(1)   The Chair of the Advisory Group may grant leave of absence to another Advisory Group member on the terms and conditions that the Chair determines.

(2)   The Minister may grant leave of absence to the Chair of the Advisory Group on the terms and conditions that the Minister determines.

6 Procedures of Advisory Group

(1)   The Advisory Group may determine the way in which it is to perform its function (including when and where it meets and procedures to be followed in relation to its meetings).

(2)   However, subclause (1) applies subject to any written directions given to the Advisory Group by the Minister for the purposes of this subsection.

(3)   The Minister must not give directions under subclause (2) about the content of any advice that may be given to the Minister by the Advisory Group.

(4)   A direction given under subclause (2) is not a legislative instrument.

7 Disclosure of interests to the Minister

      An Advisory Group member must give written notice to the Minister of all interests, pecuniary or otherwise, that the member has or acquires and that conflict or could conflict with the proper performance of the member's functions.

8 Disclosure of interests to the Advisory Group

(1)   An Advisory Group member who has an interest, pecuniary or otherwise, in a matter being considered or about to be considered by the Advisory Group must disclose the nature of the interest to a meeting of the Advisory Group.

(2)   The disclosure must be made as soon as possible after the relevant facts have come to the member's knowledge.

(3)   The disclosure must be recorded in the minutes of the meeting of the Advisory Group.

(4)   Unless the Advisory Group otherwise determines, the Advisory Group member:

   (a)   must not be present during any deliberation by the Advisory Group on the matter; and

   (b)   must not take part in any decision of the Advisory Group with respect to the matter.

(5)   For the purposes of making a determination under subclause (4), the Advisory Group member:

   (a)   must not be present during any deliberation of the Advisory Group for the purpose of making the determination; and

   (b)   must not take part in making the determination.

(6)   A determination under subclause (4) must be recorded in the minutes of the meeting of the Advisory Group.

9 Resignation

(1)   An Advisory Group member may resign his or her appointment by giving the Minister a written resignation.

(2)   The resignation takes effect on the day it is received by the Minister or, if a later day is specified in the resignation, on that later day.

10 Termination of appointment

      The Minister may terminate the appointment of an Advisory Group member:

   (a)   for misbehaviour or physical or mental incapacity; or

   (b)   if the member:

      (i)   becomes bankrupt; or

      (ii)   applies to take the benefit of any law for the relief of bankrupt or insolvent debtors; or

      (iii)   compounds with his or her creditors; or

      (iv)   makes an assignment of his or her remuneration for the benefit of his or her creditors; or

   (c)   if the member is absent, except on leave of absence, from 3 consecutive meetings of the Advisory Group; or

   (d)   if the member fails, without reasonable excuse, to comply with clause 7 (disclosure of interests to the Minister) or 8 (disclosure of interests to the Advisory Group).

11 Other terms and condition

      An Advisory Group member holds office on the terms and conditions (if any) in relation to matters not covered by this Act that are determined by the Minister.

[Advisory Group]

Our second set of amendments introduces a product stewardship advisory group. This in many ways goes to the same issues that we have been dealing with so far this morning. It is an idea that was raised by quite a number of those making submissions to the committee.

There were two broad categories of reasons why the Australian Greens felt that this was a valid suggestion and something that would materially improve the way that the bill operates. The first is the lack of priorities established in the legislation that I think we have already canvassed in some detail. Industry and community groups who follow this process have absolutely no idea where it is due to head apart from some very broad-brush issues that the minister outlined there. The second is that the minister, under the way that this act will operate, has very broad powers without any particular accoun­tability mechanism or opportunity for input. So there is enormous discretion there to take issues on, to take various product streams on or not. Environment ministers obviously all get together within the EPHC and as an entity within the larger COAG process, which we find almost completely opaque because what goes on behind those closed doors can be very difficult to influence or even to know, in many cases, what the propositions are. Our amendments pick up the suggestions made by those in the sector who proposed that an advisory group would best comprise experts from industry groups, consumer advocates, community groups, environment groups and scientific groups who would be valuable in providing expert advice on new products that could potentially come under the framework legislation. That not only gives the government some guidance as to where the industry, in the broadest concept of that term, thinks that this process should go but also provides the minister and the community with that advice, that you have the experts around the table when these decisions are being made.

The use of an expert panel was seen as providing forthright advice from outside the bureaucracy. This would be seen to strengthen the governance arrangements. This is nothing against the bureaucrats who have been managing this process to date, but we feel that diversity of opinion and having the experts in the room when the decisions are being made is a way of providing unfiltered advice to the government that can also generate and transmit a sense of urgency coming from the community for various things. For example, we are aware of media reporting a fortnight or so ago about four shipments of e-waste intercepted by Customs, presumably on their way to South-East Asia. That is not what the industry wants, it is not what people think is happening when their computers and televisions are picked up or they drop them off at a neighbourhood recycling centre, but it is still going on. For the government to be able to respond through this expert advisory group to changing circumstances or new information that arises, like the degree of a black market in e-waste shipping and dumping in some of our neighbouring countries, can guide the direction and help give a sense of urgency. WALGA, the Western Australian Local Government Association, said that a panel:

… would ensure that the most important products and those with the biggest potential to create an environmental impact were selected for product stewardship schemes.

As I noted, this is a way of prioritising that has support from industry right through to the community groups and so on.

An example of such an advisory committee being established to manage waste and determine priorities is the statutory Waste Advisory Board in New Zealand. That board is tasked with providing advice to the responsible minister on a range of issues, including:

declaring priority products—

it is not required to develop a priority list—

making guidelines for product stewardship schemes

…   …   …

specifying criteria for the funding of waste minimisation projects

…   …   …

regulations on records, information and reports.

The committee's report details the New South Wales model established under that state's Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Act 2001 which established a non-statutory committee with expert, business and non-government representatives to assist the Director-General of the DCCW to develop the list of wastes of concern. I know that the department were probably pretty cautious about establishing this, and I am pleased that the committee process that we went through and the evidence that we received convinced all parties that advice to the minister is ultimately very useful. It convenes and facilitates engagement by the industry and it is effectively an opportunity for the government to get it right. I commend these amendments to the chamber.

Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia) (12:03): I indicate the coalition's support for this package of amendments which essentially establish the Product Stewardship Advisory Group. This ties in with amendments that are to be moved by the government. We hope these amendments will together provide greater certainty for industry and for all those who are stakeholders within the operation of this act once it is passed.

We heard the concerns that Senator Ludlum outlined, that people were not sure that there was sufficient certainty about where things were going under the operation of the product stewardship scheme, the priorities for future schemes and whether they would be considered in the context of voluntary, co-regulatory or mandatory schemes, exactly how these things would work, how priorities would be set and how much forewarning there would be that an industry could be captured by such a scheme.

Whilst the government has been at pains throughout to emphasise that processes of the regulatory impact statement and otherwise will take some time, that the prioritisation work done by the Environment Protection and Heritage Council will take some time and that there should be in the normal operation of things a good period of time for anyone to become aware that their industry is under consideration, the expec­tation is that these things will always be done in a consultative and cooperative framework. You will get the best outcomes by involving industry along the way. All of those things aside and despite the assurances given, it was still thought to be beneficial to the trans­parency of the operation of the scheme for other stakeholders to have the opportunity to have input about the priorities and, for the certainty of industry, that within the legislation there was a framework for input and prioritising and that that framework ensured that there was some public awareness of it.

The amendments moved by Senator Ludlam to establish the Product Stewardship Advisory Group provide for a structure for that input, for advice to the minister and to the council and for prioritisation. The amendments to be moved by Senator Ludlam shortly require the publishing of products that are being considered for accreditation or regulation under the act. They tie in with this and will ensure that there is public awareness and certainty for all parties. Again, I express my thanks to the other parties for the cooperative approach in addressing the concerns that the Senate committee identified and indicate the coalition's support for these amendments.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (12:06): I indicate the government supports these amendments. Following on from what Senator Birmingham said, I thank the parties for the cooperative way in which they worked with the department to come up with this proposal.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (12:07): Before we move on, I want to put to the minister a question around an issue that I raised earlier, which is whether he considers the establishment of this advisory group as providing a mechanism for doing a couple of things: firstly, having the expert views in the room and, secondly, publishing lists of particular products or categories of waste that might soon fall under the scheme. As has been made very clear, we have three different ways of regulating different kinds of waste: voluntary schemes, where the industry goes ahead and sets up its own scheme, of which I guess the MobileMuster is an example; the co-regulatory scheme, where we see the industry working with government to establish a scheme that it can then be held to; and mandatory schemes—for example, with very hazardous materials where you do not want things left to chance.

In the broadest conception of this, if we get it right the first time and there is all the goodwill at the table and industry comes to the party and so on, the right products will be put in the right one of those three categories and all of a sudden, within a couple of years, we will see dramatic reductions in landfill; we will see dramatic increases in resource recovery and efficiency of recycling; we will see a huge reduction, for example, in greenhouse gas emissions from landfill as organic material is removed; and the scheme will be working as intended. My question to the minister is: at what point will assess­ments be made as to whether the targets for the various product streams—let us take the example of mobile phones—have failed to be met or are not strong enough in the first place and we still have huge volumes of material just heading out to landfill or being thrown away? What will the process be for re-evaluation of whether something should go from voluntary to co-reg or from co-reg to mandatory? What will be the levers that will drive take-up of higher recycling? What will be the penalties, for example, for missing a particular target? How does the minister envisage the advisory group driving those improvements in performance if, with a particular product or class of materials, we are still sitting here in five years time with, for example, five per cent recovery rates of mobile phones under a voluntary scheme? What will be the process of assessment whereby it is taken out of the voluntary space and, for example, we initiate a co-regulatory mechanism?

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (12:09): Thank you, Senator Ludlam, for that question. I have the greatest of confidence that with the amount of effort that we have put into this legislation, and the amount of time that you and the opposition have put into it, we have developed a program which will ensure that we move forward in the direction that you certainly want us to head in. I cannot predict the future, but I do have the greatest of confidence that we will progress in the area of recycling and the areas that you are concerned about as a result of this legislation. If it turns out that it does not work in the way in which we hope or expect then obviously we will look at that and relook at it. But I think the effort that all of the parties have put into getting to this point will result in this legislation working in the way that we intend it to work. Obviously if it does not then the issue is going to have to be revisited, but I have the greatest of confidence that this legislation will do exactly what we intend it to do.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (12:11): The reason that I raise this issue is that it is good that the parliamentary secretary has this high degree of confidence that the system is going to work because there is goodwill—as we have seen, there is tripartisan consensus, in this chamber at least, that this is a scheme that needs to get up and go forward—but, when you say that the bill will act as intended, there are no targets; it is an empty framework. There are no levers, for example. I would seek to have the parliamentary secretary address speci­fically the issue that I asked about: what triggers or thresholds will be set, either legislatively or as part of the work of this advisory group, that would move a product category or product scheme from one tier to the next? At what point do we say a particular voluntary scheme is not working and needs to be tightened up? There is nothing in the bill—maybe you could point it out if I have missed it—that would require that kind of transition to a higher standard of performance if we are failing in one particular area.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (12:12): Thank you for the question, Senator Ludlam. The key inputs to the legislation, of course, are the advisory groups, the international agreements and the environment ministers council. If any one of those groups is of the view that the legislation is not working then of course it will raise that and we will deal with it on a case-by-case basis. We have the TV and computer program; that will be the first test. I am very confident that that will, particularly once we have written the regulations, demonstrate to the community that this legislation works. But there are processes by which organisations can raise any concerns about failing to meet the expectations of the legislation, and I am sure that that is what will happen.

Question agreed to.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (12:14): I table the supplementary explanatory memorandum relating to the government amendments to be moved to this bill. The memorandum was circulated in the chamber on 12 May 2011. I seek leave to move the government amendments together.

Leave granted.

Senator FARRELL: I move government amendments (1) to (15) on sheet AF202 together:

(1)   Clause 9, page 13 (line 11), omit "(1) Subject to subsections(2) and (3), this Act", substitute "This Act".

[relationship to State and Territory laws]

(2)   Clause 9, page 13 (line 15) to page 14 (line 23), omit subclauses (2) and (3).

[relationship to State and Territory laws]

(3)   Clause 17, page 21 (line 17), after "that", insert ", among other things".

[products for regulation]

(4)   Heading to subclause 19(3), page 25 (line 1), at the end of the heading, add "etc.".

[products for regulation]

(5)   Clause 19, page 25 (line 8), at the end of paragraph (3)(b), add "; and".

[products for regulation]

(6)   Clause 19, page 25 (after line 8), after paragraph (3)(b), insert:

   (c)   if regulations made for the purposes of subsection (1) are not already in force in relation to the class of products:

      (i)   the class of products has been notified in accordance with subsection (3A) no later than 12 months beforehand; or

      (ii)   there are special circumstances justifying the making of the regulations without that notification.

[products for regulation]

(7)   Clause 19, page 25 (after line 10), after subclause (3), insert:

(3A)   For the purposes of subparagraph (3)(c)(i), a class of products must be notified by being included in a list or notice, published on the Department's website, of classes of products in relation to which the Minister is proposing to consider whether some form of accreditation or regulation under this Act might be appropriate.

(3B)   If the Governor-General makes regu­lations to which subparagraph (3)(c)(ii) applies in relation to a class of products, the regulations must, when laid before both Houses of Parliament under section 38 of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003, be accompanied by a statement, prepared by the Minister, setting out the special circumstances mentioned in that subparagraph.

[products for regulation]

(8)   Clause 36, page 41 (line 14), after "that", insert ", among other things".

[products for regulation]

(9)   Clause 37, page 43 (line 28), omit "paragraph 39(c)", substitute "paragraph 39(1)(c)".

[products for regulation]

(10) Clause 39, page 44 (line 29), omit "Before", substitute "(1) Before".

[products for regulation]

(11)    Clause 39, page 45 (line 13), at the end of subparagraph (c)(ii), add "; and".

[products for regulation]

(12)    Clause 39, page 45 (after line 13), after paragraph (c), insert:

   (d)   if regulations made for the purposes of section 37 are not already in force in relation to the class of products:

      (i)   the class of products has been notified in accordance with subsection (2) no later than 12 months beforehand; or      (ii)   there are special circumstances justifying the making of the regulations without that notification.

[products for regulation]

(13)    Clause 39, page 45 (line 18), at the end of the clause, add:

(2)   For the purposes of subparagraph (1)(d)(i), a class of products must be notified by being included in a list or notice, published on the Department's website, of classes of products in relation to which the Minister is proposing to consider whether some form of accreditation or regulation under this Act might be appropriate.

(3)   If the Governor-General makes regulations to which subparagraph (1)(d)(ii) applies in relation to a class of products, the regulations must, when laid before both Houses of Parliament under section 38 of the Legislative Instruments Act 2003, be accompanied by a statement, prepared by the Minister, setting out the special circumstances mentioned in that subparagraph.

[products for regulation]

(14)    Heading to clause 108, page 92 (line 1), omit "on Department's website", substitute "about arrangements".

[products for regulation]

(15)    Page 92, (after line 27), after clause 108, insert:

108A Publishing material about products being considered for accreditation or regulation under this Act

(1)   The Minister must publish on the Department's website, before the end of each financial year that starts after the commencement of this Act:

   (a)   a list of classes of products in relation to which the Minister is proposing to consider, during the next financial year, whether some form of accreditation or regulation under this Act might be appropriate; and

   (b)   the reason (or reasons) why the Minister is proposing to give that consideration.

(2)   In preparing a list of classes of products as required by paragraph (1)(a), the Minister may have regard to any matter the Minister considers relevant, including:

   (a)   whether the product stewardship criteria are satisfied in relation to those classes of products; and

   (b)   whether one or more of the following apply in relation to the products in those classes:

      (i)   reusing, recycling, recovering, treating or disposing of the products involves a significant cost to the Commonwealth, or State, Territory or local governments;

      (ii)   the consumer is willing to pay for action that reduces the impact that the products have on the environment, or that substances contained in the products have on the environment, or on the health or safety of human beings;

      (iii)   taking action to reduce those impacts will offer business opportunities that would make a contribution to the economy.

(3)   The Minister must cause to be tabled in both Houses of Parliament a list of classes of products published under paragraph (1)(a), accompanied by the reason (or reasons) in relation to that list published under paragraph (1)(b), within 15 sitting days after the day of that publication.

[products for regulation/criteria]

In the interests of time, Mr Temporary Chairman, I will not address them.

Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia) (12:14): Equally in the interests of time, I indicate that I addressed the primary substance of these amendments in my comments with regard to Senator Ludlam's amendment. These are comple­mentary to a number of the other things that we have done and particularly to the establishment of the advisory group. These amendments will provide for the publication of those materials that are being considered for accreditation or regulation under the act and in doing so will basically give industry and groups 12 months of forewarning that an issue is on the books and under considera­tion. The likelihood is the processes will end up taking much longer than that to get from beginning to end, but at least there is in a sense a minimum time frame in here, aside from special circumstances, that ensures there is some certainty and awareness. The coalition will be supporting the amendments.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (12:15): I will address some brief remarks to these amendments. I am a bit surprised that the minister did not see fit to at least briefly describe to the chamber what they actually do. There are a number here, and I am happy to address the issue of publication in advance. As Senator Birmingham has indi­cated, you would have to be not paying attention for a very long period of time to be caught out by the government's intention to regulate in one of these product stewardship schemes; these things I think are agreed well in advance. All the same, the Greens cer­tainly will not be opposing the listing in advance. That was one of the things that the committee recommended should happen to provide clarity. We would see that these amendments would work in concert with the creation of the advisory group, whereby, after the whole process has been gone through of setting priorities and hopefully establishing targets and at least implied consequences for failure to meet some of those targets, they would then make their way onto the proposed register to give everybody in the community and the industry clarity about where the process seeks to go. I do not think there is anything controversial about those amendments.

I should also acknowledge that the amendments the government is seeking to batch up here and move also affect the way that this legislation will interact with state and territory laws. As I said at the outset we know that, in the policy vacuum that effectively has been the Commonwealth response to waste management in recent decades, the states and territories have gone ahead and done their own thing in many areas. So one or two of the amendments that the government is seeking to pass here ensure, for example, that state laws that might be stronger or more effective than processes established at the Commonwealth level are not expunged or wiped out by the bill. The importance of this could be seen in the example of South Australia, where we have a container deposit scheme that is very much worth preserving.

The South Australian container deposit scheme has been operating since 1977 and it has been an inspiration for the rest of the country. We have seen that initiative now spread to the Northern Territory and, as I said earlier, Colleen Hartland MLC, my colleague in the Victorian parliament, is moving possibly as we speak to introduce a similar scheme in Victoria. In South Australia the service has expanded to include kerbside collection, expanded the range of containers to which deposits and refunds apply and increased the deposit to 10c. But that is a scheme that careless legislation by the Commonwealth could accidentally wipe out, if we were not careful.

South Australia now has a drink container recovery rate of over 80 per cent and there is a notable lack of litter on highways, on parks and on beaches. South Australians recycle over 1½ tonnes per person per year. The container deposit system in South Australia also benefits community organisations like scout groups that operate container collection depots. That is one of the areas where, again, we could accidentally do quite a bit of damage in here if we wipe out a scheme that has been operating successfully in South Australia. The collection depots that the Australian Greens seek in our national container deposit bill would be paid for by the operation of the scheme which would establish a network of neighbourhood recyc­ling places. While they would start out as being just for beverages they would end up being used to collect a great deal more. Scout groups in South Australia, for example, earn $9 million a year from that recycling activity, and 92 per cent of South Australians report a high level of support for their container deposit system.

Today in the Victorian parliament, as I said, Colleen Hartland MLC is reintroducing her bill for a 10c refundable deposit on drink bottles, cans and cartons in Victoria. In 2009 her private member's bill passed in Victoria's upper house, the Legislative Council, where it gained support from all opposition parties. The then government quite famously refused to debate the bill in the lower house, where they had an absolute majority. It is worth noting that the Victorian opposition MPs who supported her 10c deposit legislation in 2009 are now in government, so it will be very interesting to see the outcome now. What this means, of course, is that because of Commonwealth inaction in this space we now have developing a patchwork of different pieces of legislation. All of them, I suspect, will work very well, but nonetheless there will be different sets of regulations applying to industries differently in the states and territories when the Commonwealth could have taken a leadership position rather than simply burying the proposal for a national scheme.

In the Northern Territory, 10c deposit legislation passed unanimously. It did not end up getting party political; it ended up being the Northern Territory assembly versus the beverage industry, which was fascinating to watch. We do not seek to politicise these issues, as we have seen in the way this debate has been conducted today. What I would invite the minister to do, though, is address something that these amendments are silent on, and that is: what will happen when a Commonwealth scheme comes into effect? We know that it will not squash a state or territory scheme that is better, that it will operate at a Commonwealth level, and that is appropriate. But what will be the case where the Commonwealth brings in legislation that is better than a state or territory scheme? What will be the impacts when a product stewardship scheme introduced under this framework legislation conflicts with a state or territory scheme when the Commonwealth scheme might be an improvement? How will that actually work?

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (12:22): Thank you for the question, Senator Ludlam. I indicate that generally speaking the way in which this matter is dealt with is that there are negotiations through COAG for the states to deal with this redundant legislation.

Question agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

Bill reported with amendments; report adopted.

Senator FARRELL: I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (12:24): This is a rather different debate. We have just been speaking on what passes as best practice in the Australian context on waste management. Now the debate turns again to worst practice in radioactive waste management. I will just conclude my remarks.

The Greens are absolutely not in denial about the 4,000-odd cubic metres of so-called low level and short-lived intermediate level radioactive waste and the approximately 600 cubic metres of long-lived radioactive waste in this country. We believe that it should not have been created in the first place but we are acutely aware of the radioactive reality that has been created for current and many future generations to deal with. The Greens are also perfectly aware that 32 cubic metres of spent research reactor fuel in reprocessed form is returning to Australia from reprocessing in France and the UK in 2015-16. The Greens take this material seriously and we understand that we cannot afford to make mistakes with materials that are deadly for thousands of years.

In the committee stage of the bill, when we come to it, we will describe at some length our alternative proposal for long-term radioactive waste management and I will sketch it now. We will seek to establish a process for identifying suitable sites that are scientific, transparent, accountable and fair and allow access to appeal mechanisms. I will put this on the record one last time in this second reading debate: we are very willing to work with the Gillard government and the opposition on this issue construc­tively and carefully. If the government chooses to return to the path that it was planning and advocating prior to the 2007 election which saw the Rudd government come to power, and if the government abandons its strategy of aggression and dispossession, we will support it in putting something better in place. But, if not, the government needs to know that it has picked a fight with powerful and resilient people.

I have spent a great deal of time on the road in the last couple of years working on this issue. I know for an absolute fact that many of the people that the government has chosen to target have nowhere else to go. They strongly and genuinely believe that if their land is taken away that they will simply have nothing. It is not good enough for the government to draw rectangles on the map, try and split families and communities off from each other and imagine that there will not be significant strong, sustained and ultimately successful resistance. The govern­ment has failed in the past in attempts to coercively dump radioactive waste on communities that are simply not willing to host it and do not understand why, if it is not safe in southern Sydney, suddenly it should be made safe by parking it in a shed or a shallow hole in the ground on their country. People do not understand that.

I want to acknowledge Dianne Stokes and Mark Lane, who have spent time in this building far from home advocating, and Kylie Sambo, who was here with Dianne yesterday, making the case very strongly and proudly speaking out for their country and culture that they do not believe that they owe the rest of Australia an obligation to host this toxic material until the end of time.

There are people who have been following this campaign closely, supporting the various people who found themselves on the front line, including Nat Wasley who has given up an enormous amount of her own time and dedicated herself to this campaign in the most extraordinary way, along with Paddy Gibson and little Jellybean who was in the public gallery, I think, probably for the first time yesterday.

In Alice Springs, Hilary Tyler has marshalled the views of the Public Health Association and medical opinion to stop the government from hiding behind this argu­ment that somehow cancer treatments require that we produce these toxic cate­gories of waste. Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conser­vation Foundation has been absol­utely extraordinary on this issue and has provided leadership over a sustained period of time as the Australian government has lurched from one emergency and coercive strategy to another, and all the folks at ACE and Friends of the Earth have made it their jobs to remind the minister that he may be a very long way from his office in Batman to the site of the dump but in fact he will be reminded day in, day out.

Lastly, Felicity Hill in my office has been a profoundly supportive and important part of this campaign and came on the road on many occasions to committee visits and demonstrations in remote parts of the country to pursue this cause. I also at this point urge support for my second reading amendment already moved.

Senator MINCHIN (South Australia) (12:29): I rise to speak on this bill in my capacity as the minister responsible for radioactive waste from 1998 to 2001 and as the minister responsible for the Land Acquisition Act, and hence the acquisition of a radioactive site, from 2001 to 2007. So I do have a long and intimate association with this vexed issue. I regret to say that the way this issue has been handled over the last 20 years is an indictment of Australia's political culture and, with great respect to my friends and colleagues opposite, the Australian Labor Party in particular. It is now nearly 20 years since the then responsible minister, Simon Crean, announced the then federal Labor government's commitment to a national repository and commenced the formal research for the best sites for that repository—and that process was still underway when we came to government in 1996.

At that point, regrettably, the ALP, then in opposition, took a 180-degree turn on this issue. From that point on, while the coalition continued the process initiated by Simon Crean and the Labor Party, the Labor Party, at state and federal levels, opposed us every step of the way. Labor spent 11½ years doing everything it possibly could to frustrate and oppose the implementation of the policy it devised when in government. The exploitation of community concern about radioactive material during that 11½ years was a real low point in Australian politics. When the then opposition could have, and should have, acted in the national interest to join with the coalition government to implement its own policy, it chose opportunism, cynicism and fearmongering.

To some extent, the worst offenders were not the federal opposition but the Rann Labor government in South Australia. Two years prior to the Rann government's election in 2002, the independent process over which I in government presided, but which had been implemented by Simon Crean, con­cluded that the central north region of South Australia was the best place in Australia to build a national radioactive waste repository. So it fell to me as the then Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, and in the interesting position of being a senator for South Australia, to announce the outcome of that scientific research in 2000 and the identification of a prospective sites in the central north of my home state.

To its great credit, the then state Liberal government in South Australia looked to the national interest and did not oppose that outcome. The Rann state Labor opposition, of course, saw a political opportunity and immediately started campaigning against having a national repository in South Australia. It did not seem to matter to Rann Labor that a national repository was federal Labor government policy under Hawke and Keating, that the federal Labor government had initiated the nationwide scientific search and that the search had identified the central north of South Australia as the best site. It did not seem to matter to the Rann Labor Party that building this national repository would enable the removal of radioactive waste from the centre of the city of Adelaide, where it was then, and still is, stored in basements on our main boulevard.

After their victory in the 2002 election the Rann Labor government used every resource available to a state government to frustrate the federal process, aided and abetted, I regret to say, by the then federal Labor opposition. The South Australian state Labor government used legislation and the courts and the cynical manipulation of South Australian public opinion to make it practically impossible for a federal coalition government to put a repository where the science—which we now hear we must obey—had told us was the best place in Australia.

Of course, as a South Australian senator and as the responsible minister, I bore the brunt of those rather vicious Labor attacks. I was branded a traitor to my state, I was pilloried at every opportunity and even my children suffered abuse at their local South Australian school. I needed police protection at public functions when I argued the case for this repository. So it was without question the ugliest period of my political career.

Of course, this cynical campaign was perpetrated by a state party and leader who had done everything they could at that stage to stop the development in South Australia of the Olympic Dam uranium mine—but they are now, of course, its biggest champions. Rann Labor now says: 'We do want the world's biggest uranium mine in South Australia but under no circumstances could we have a national repository for Australia's short-lived and intermediate level radioactive waste. The Howard government did the only thing it could: leave Mr Rann to wallow in his rank hypocrisy and seek to establish a Commonwealth repository in the Northern Territory. We were left with no other option, given the actions of the Rann Labor government. So those opposed to a repository in the Northern Territory have Mr Rann to blame. But for him, we would already have a national repository up and running in outback South Australia.

Now, of course, we are regrettably witnessing the hypocrisy of federal Labor. Federal Labor in opposition aided and abetted the Rann Labor government in its campaign to frustrate the national interest. Federal Labor attacked us relentlessly on this issue. Federal Labor in opposition voted against our 2005 legislation to develop a Commonwealth repository in the Northern Territory and promised at the 2007 election to repeal our legislation. Of course, now that they are back in government they are being mugged by the same reality that the previous Labor government faced nearly 20 years ago and they are now committed to establishing what Australia must have: a national purpose-built repository. So now we have a Labor bill which is essentially the same as our 2005 legislation which, as I say, Labor so cynically opposed at the time.

As the then shadow minister for resources and energy in the coalition, in March last year, just before my resignation, I sought and obtained shadow cabinet and coalition party room support for this Labor legislation, and I was gratified that the coalition party room put the national interest first rather than pursuing a cynical, short-sighted and politi­cally motivated opposition. Unlike Labor in opposition, we will not play politics on this issue, and I applaud my own party for the stand they are taking. We must build this repository. As I said at the outset, it is a sad indictment of the political culture of this country that, for nearly 20 years, successive federal governments of both persuasions have tried to do the right thing without success. As a nation we have been incapable of collectively accepting the need for a purpose-built repository for our radioactive waste—nobody else's—and to get it built and get it operational.

The political exploitation of the tendency to nimbyism will cripple this country unless we unite to overcome it. Labor and the coalition must understand the importance of putting politics aside and joining together in the national interest to achieve outcomes like the proper safe disposal of radioactive waste. My experience with this radioactive waste issue, over many years, is why I have repeatedly and consistently said to my own party that without bipartisanship you can completely forget about nuclear power in Australia. If, after 20 years, we still have not been able to establish a low-level radioactive waste repository out in the desert, imagine how long it is going to take to build a nuclear power station. So I welcome the somewhat belated bipartisanship on this waste issue. We have to get this repository built as soon as possible.

I commend the government for bringing in this legislation and I commend my colleagues for agreeing to support it. I conclude by commending my colleague Senator Nigel Scullion for his handling of this issue. As it was difficult for South Australian senators, so it is difficult for Northern Territory senators—both Labor and coalition. I do know how tough it has been for both of them. I want to commend to the Senate the amendment moved by Senator Scullion and I urge the government to accept his very sensible proposal.

Senator BOB BROWN (Tasmania—Leader of the Australian Greens) (12:39): I join my colleague Senator Ludlam in opposing this legislation. I take up the point at the end of Senator Minchin's very sharp and well-delivered speech where he said, in advocating that this bill pass expeditiously: imagine how long it is going to take to build a nuclear power station after the length of time it has taken to establish a nuclear waste dump. Therein lies an enunciation of the fear that so many people have about a nuclear waste dump being put 'in the desert', as Senator Minchin puts it—that is, in this ecosystem in the Northern Territory.

This is not as innocent as it looks. This is a proposal to put low-level waste from medical facilities or whatever into a place that is out of the range of most city dwellers but on the land of Indigenous people in Central Australia, against the wishes of people in the region that is being targeted by this legislation. But what Senator Minchin has clearly outlined is a proposal that in future this waste dump also be the repository for waste coming from the proliferation of nuclear power stations in Australia. We do not need long memories to go back to the Howard proposal, in the run-up to the 2007 election, that there be up to 25 nuclear power stations around Australia, close to—for grid reasons and because they are cooled by water—existing major population centres. It is very much alive and on the agenda of the alternative government of this country that nuclear power stations will come down the line, despite what we have seen unfold in Japan in recent months.

It is as if on the benches opposite there is an inability to grasp the threat to humanity of the whole nuclear power cycle. I want to talk about that for a moment, because a former Prime Minister approached me recently proposing that Australia become a nuclear waste dump for the whole world and the money coming from such a nuclear waste dump be put to environmental purposes. I said: 'Well, Bob, how can that be? The environmental threat of a nuclear waste dump feeding a nuclear industry on the planet far outrides any monetary advantage that might be put into the environment itself.' Let us make no mistake: Muckaty Station is targeted not just for a low-level or even medium-level nuclear waste dump, as proposed in this legislation, but to become the Australian repository of waste from a nuclear industry which has huge plans afoot for nuclear power stations in this country. At the highest levels of corporate thinking is the proposal that this waste dump become a global nuclear waste dump. And (a) leads to (b) leads to (c). You cannot see this legislation divorced from that intent. Senator Minchin has just given a clear indicator of how live and prospective these proposals are.

Senator Ludlam has done an enormous amount of work in evaluating this proposal and has outlined more specific and local reasons for not going ahead with it. Senator Minchin has condemned the South Australian government for opposing north-east South Australia as a site for a nuclear waste dump, and I add this: every reason that the Rann government gave for opposing a nuclear waste dump in north-east South Australia applies to this proposal in the Northern Territory. It is simply a case of the Commonwealth having the power over the Territory that it does not have in overriding a state interest. What is good enough for South Australia is good enough for the Northern Territory.

Debate interrupted.

Senator McEWEN (South Australia—Government Whip in the Senate) (15:31): I move:

That:

(a)   That the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee be authorised to hold public meetings during the sitting of the Senate on 16 June 2011, as follows: (A) from 5.30 pm, in relation to its inquiry on the provisions of the Migra­tion Amendment (Strengthening the Character Test and Other Provisions) Bill 2011; and (B) from 4 pm, in relation to its inquiry on the provisions of the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2011.

(b)   the Joint Select Committee on Gambling Reform be authorised to hold a private meeting otherwise than in accordance with standing order 33(1) during the sitting of the Senate on Tuesday, 21 June 2011, from 4 pm;

(c)   the Joint Select Committee on the Christmas Island tragedy of 15 December 2010 be authorised to hold a public meeting during the sitting of the Senate on Thursday, 16 June 2011, from 4 pm to 5 pm;

(d)   the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services be auth­orised to hold a public meeting during the sitting of the Senate on Wednesday, 15 June 2011, from 5 pm to 6.30 pm, to take evidence for the committee’s inquiry into the statutory oversight of the operations of ASIC;

(e)   the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services be authorised to hold a private meeting otherwise than in accordance with standing order 33(1) during the sitting of the Senate on Thursday, 16 June 2011, from 11.30 am;

(f)   the Joint Standing Committee on Migration be authorised to hold a public meeting during the sitting of the Senate on Wednesday, 22 June 2011, from 10.30 am to noon;

Question agreed to.

Senator McEWEN: I move:

That the time for the presentation of the report of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee on the 2011-12 Budget estimates be extended to 5 July 2011.

Question agred to.

Senator McEWEN: I move:

(a)   That the time for the presentation of the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee on the provisions of the Family Law Legislation Amendment (Family Violence and Other Measures) Bill 2011 be extended 16 August 2011; and

(b)   That the time for the presentation of the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee on the provisions of the Mig­ra­­tion Amendment (Strengthening the Charac­­ter Test and Other Provisions) Bill 2011 be extend­ed to 23 June 2011.

Question agreed to.

Senator PARRY (Tasmania—Chief Opposition Whip in the Senate and Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (15:32): I ask that notices of motion nos 256, 257, 258 and 259 be taken together and as formal.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I s there any objection to these motions being taken together and as formal?

Senator McEWEN: Yes. I note that, although we are not opposing formality of motion N o. 257, the government intends to oppose that motion.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I will then separate the motions. I call Senator Parry.

Senator PARRY: I move:

That:

(a)   The Select Committee on the Reform of the Australian Federation be authorised to hold a private meeting otherwise than in accordance with standing order 33(1) during the sitting of the Senate on Thursday, 16 June 2011; and

(b)   That the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties be authorised to hold a public meeting during the sitting of the Senate on Monday, 20 June 2011, from 10 am to noon.

Question agreed to.

Senator PARRY: I move:

That the time for the presentation of the report of the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills on the future direction and role of the com­mittee be extended to 22 September 2011.

Question agreed to.

Senator PARRY: I move general business notice of motion No. 257:

That the time for the presentation of the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legis­lation Committee on the Patent Amendment (Human Genes and Biological Materials) Bill 2010 be extended to 25 August 2011.

Question agreed to.

Senator SIEWERT: I move:

That the following bill be introduced: A Bill for an Act to amend the Export Control Act 1982 to prohibit the export of live animals for slaughter, and for related purposes.

Question agreed to.

Senator SIEWERT: I present the bill and move:

That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (15:36): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

Senator SIEWERT: I table an explanatory memorandum and I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Live Animal Export (Slaughter) Prohibition Bill 2011

This bill will put an immediate end to the horrific treatment of Australian cattle in overseas abattoirs.

Since the ABC's Four Corners program, an episode aptly titled A Bloody Business, was aired two weeks ago my office has been inundated with emails and phone calls from constituents all over Australia who were appalled and outraged by the footage of Australian cattle being subjected to cruel treatment. Australians were horrified to see eye gouging, kicking, tail twisting or breaking, as well as cattle experiencing an average of 11 cuts to the throat, whilst conscious, with one animal suffering 33 cuts to its throat.

The very next day I, as the Australian Greens spokesperson for animal welfare, announced a two-pronged approach to ending live export, calling for the immediate suspension of export licences, followed by a legislated ban on live exports.

It took the minister days to announce a ban on exports to 11 identified abattoirs and days again still to announce a suspension of all cattle exports to Indonesia. The Australian Greens support the ban of exports to Indonesia. Indonesia has no domestic animal protection laws to enforce mandatory stunning or OIE guidelines, and enforcement of standards in over 4000 slaughter locations across Indonesia will be near impossible and very costly. Indonesia is already a signatory to the OIE and Australia has no power to make Indonesia comply with these guidelines. OIE guidelines are minimal standards for developing countries that allow practices that are illegal in Australia to take place.

As a Senator for Western Australia I have a particular interest in this industry. On average, 180,000 cattle are exported from WA to Indonesia from the WA ports of Broome, Fremantle, Geraldton and Wyndham. In 2010 a total of 170,555 cattle were exported to Indonesia from Western Australia. Already this year, 7,010 cattle have been exported to Indonesia.

That is why I have introduced this bill. The Live Animal Export (Slaughter) Prohibition Bill 2011 amends the Export Control Act 1982 to prohibit the export of live animals for slaughter. The bill provides definitions of livestock and livestock for slaughter to limit the application of the bill to livestock, as defined in section 3 of the Australian Meat and Live-stock Industry Act 1997 as cattle, calves, sheep, lambs, goats or other prescribed animals, that is intended to be exported and slaughtered overseas. The ban will be in place immediately, with no delay and no continued cruelty. My colleague, Adam Bandt MP, will be introducing the same bill in the House of Representatives in order to maintain pressure on the government to take swift action to end the trade.

The footage shown on Four Corners was provided by Animals Australia investigators who visited 10 abattoirs in four Indonesian cities in March 2011. The RSPCA then conducted a full scientific assessment of the evidence from this investigation.

6.4 million Australian cattle have been sent to these conditions in Indonesia over the last 20 years. The cattle travel from northern Australia to Indonesia in ships with 2,000-3,000 head capacity and the trip can take between 5-10 days, with between one and five animals dying during each shipment from injury, heat stress or pneumonia. Cattle are then feed-lotted in Indonesia for 90 days before being trucked to slaughter. Cattle in Australia are stunned prior to slaughter, including those cattle for the halal-certified export market, but in Indonesia less than 10% of cattle are stunned before having their throats cut, meaning the vast majority of cattle are fully conscious when their throat is cut.

The evidence collected by these two peak animal welfare organisations, Animals Australia and RSPCA, shows that the Mark I cattle restraint devices, which were commissioned under the Meat and Livestock Australia & Livecorp program, facilitate Australian cattle being subjected to cruel practices. The industry program installed 109 of these devices in Indonesia abattoirs since 2001 and was subsidised to the tune of $1.2 million in taxpayer funds. The restraints enable a method of slaughter that trips the animals onto their sides, allowing their throat to be cut. As Animals Australia and the RSPCA state "footage shows terrified animals falling violently onto a sloping concrete slab and during the process of trying to get up crashing their heads and faces against the sharp edge of a concrete blood drain. The force of these blows has chipped away at the cement and has been known to break jaws".

Serious questions need to be asked about the roles of organisations as Meat and Livestock Australia and LiveCorp. MLA has received $5 per head of cattle exported to address animal welfare issues–clearly that has not happened appropriately. The Australian Greens will be moving to have this issue examined by the Rural Affairs and Transport Committee to determine how it was allowed to eventuate.

With around 100 abattoirs in operation in Indonesia taking Australian cattle, the Four Corners program was not highlighting a one-off or an isolated incident. This is widespread, systemic and appalling mistreatment. Previous investigations by Animals Australia have shown equally cruel treatment of Australian animals, for example cattle in Egypt in 2006, sheep in Kuwait in 2010 and 2003, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Jordan in 2007. The evidence is mounting that no matter what animal or what country we export to we cannot guarantee that those Australian animals will be treated humanely at standards which Australians expect.

The sheer numbers of animals involved in this industry are astounding. Between 2008 – 2010 approximately 2,697,569 cattle were exported from Australia, in the same three years 10,751,169 sheep were exported and 254,798 goats.

The range of countries to which animals are exported is also vast. Sheep are exported from Fremantle, Portland and Port Adelaide to Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Israel, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Breeder cattle are exported from Darwin, Fremantle and Broome to Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Jordan, Japan, Israel and Brunei. Goats are exported from Adelaide, Fremantle and Sydney to Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius and Brunei.

Exporting Australian animals to the type of conditions we consistently witness is not acceptable. The Australian Greens propose that we need to be looking at how to improve and increase processing in Australia to support local producers and jobs. The community benefits of processing meat in Australia have been underestimated for too long and are being talked down by the live export industry. An ACIL Tasman report in 2009 found that the phasing out of live sheep exports would have a minimal impact of farmers. A 2010 report, commissioned by Australia's leading meat processors, found that live cattle exports compete with and undermine Australia's domestic beef industry leading to lost processing opportunities in Australia.

Processing animals in Australia protects them from inhumane treatment and ensures our laws and standards regarding animal welfare can be upheld.

By growing our meat export trade we can create more local jobs, support communities and maintain economic viability for producers. We should be investing in these economic opportunities rather than maintaining the live export trade which sees animals being treated so badly once they leave our shores.

The Australian Greens will continue to call for an immediate ban on all live exports until the cows, sheep and goats come home.

I commend this bill to the Senate.

Debate adjourned.

Senator SIEWERT: I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Senator BOB BROWN (Tasmania—Leader of the Australian Greens) (15:47): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

Senator BOB BROWN: I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death and disease in Australia, accounting for approximately 15,500 deaths per annum. Tobacco also has a massive social cost for Australia, calculated at over $30 billion per year even when the tobacco excise is taken into account. The revenue from tobacco tax does not come close to covering the social costs of tobacco use to our community.

Australia’s tobacco control achievements over the past decades have been substantial. Tobacco control measures have prevented a significant number of premature deaths, and saved far more in health and other costs than the amount spent on the measures themselves.

Such measures include restricting the advertising of tobacco products, increasing the excise on tobacco products and now the government’s plans to mandate plain packaging for all cigarettes sold in Australia by 1 July 2012, which the Greens support.

And yet we still allow tobacco companies to donate to political parties in Australia. In fact tobacco companies have a history of donating to major political parties. This practice is untenable and the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Tobacco Industry Donations) Bill 2011 seeks to remedy this situation by banning political donations from the tobacco industry.

The bill amends the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to:

make unlawful the receipt of a gift from manufacturers or wholesalers of tobacco products by political parties or candidates; and

introduce new offences related to this measure.

Currently the only legislation in Australia prohibiting political donations from tobacco companies is in New South Wales due to major reforms to the state’s political funding and disclosure legislation passed last year. The changes commenced on 1 January 2011 and reflect amendments proposed by the NSW Greens to include prohibitions on donations from a range of players, including tobacco industry business entities.

No other states or territories legislatively prohibit donations from tobacco companies.

The bill is an opportunity for the Com­monwealth parliament to take the lead and legislate to ban the insidious practice of tobacco companies trying to exert influence over our democratic decision making processes.

In 2004 the Australian Labor Party com­mendably stopped accepting donations from the tobacco industry. However, the Liberal and National parties continue to accept money from big tobacco. Between 2005 and 2010, the Liberals and Nationals received a combined total of over $1.4 million from the two major tobacco companies—British American and Philip Morris. By its own admission, British American Tobacco states that on the issue of political donations, 'such payments can only be made for the purpose of influencing the debate on issues.'

Notably, the Western Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, has stated that he does not support accepting donations from tobacco companies and that the state parliamentary Liberal Party also takes that position. Furthermore, individual federal Liberal MPs have stated their opposition to their party accepting donations from big tobacco, and are now publicly calling on their leader Mr Abbott to end this appalling practice.

Research published in 2008 in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health revealed that approximately 61.6 per cent of smokers and 78.4 per cent of non-smokers surveyed were against political parties accepting tobacco industry donations.

I commend Mr Shayne Neumann MP, member for Blair, for his motion in the House of Representatives on 30 May 2011 which in part calls on all members and political parties to immediately stop accepting political donations from tobacco companies.

It is Greens' policy that there should be public funding of elections to eliminate corporate funding, with the exception of small donations by individuals. Donations by tobacco companies are particularly insidious, peddling death. Public health is at risk if we continue to allow big tobacco to exert influence over our policy making.

Australia is leading the world by mandating plain packaging for all cigarettes. We can reinforce our leadership and bipartisan support in the area of tobacco control by banning political donations by tobacco companies and prioritising public health over the interests of big corporations and political parties.

I commend the bill to the Senate.

Senator BOB BROWN: I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Senator MOORE (Queensland) (15:47): At the request of Senator Xenophon, I move:

That the time for the presentation of the report of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee on the Food Standards Amendment (Truth in Labelling—Genetically Modified Material) Bill 2010 be extended to 13 October 2011.

Question agreed to.

Senator McEWEN (South Australia—Government Whip in the Senate) (15:48): by leave—At the request of Senator Sterle, I move:

That the time for the presentation of the report of the Rural Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee on the exposure draft and explanatory memorandum of the Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2011 be extended to 21 June 2011.

Question agreed to.

Senator PARRY (Tasmania—Chief Opposition Whip in the Senate and Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (15:49): by leave—At the request of Senator Heffernan, I move:

That the time for the presentation of the report of the Rural Affairs and Transport References Committee on pilot safety, including con­sideration of the Transport Safety Investi­gation Amendment (Incident Reports) Bill 2010 be extended to 22 June 2011.

Question agreed to.

Senator PARRY (Tasmania—Chief Opposition Whip in the Senate and Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (15:50): At the request of Senator Coonan, the Chair of the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills, I present the committee's fifth report. I also lay on the table Scrutiny of Bills Alert Digest No. 5 of 2011.

Ordered that the report be printed.

Senator PARRY: I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I seek leave to incorporate a tabling statement in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The statement read as follows—

In tabling the Committee's Alert Digest No.5 of 2011 and its Fifth Report of 2011, I particularly draw the Senate's attention to the Committee's comments on the:

Migration Amendments (Strengthening the Character Test and Other Provisions) Bill;

Appropriation Bill (No.2); and

Child Support (Registration and Collection) Amendment Bill;

The Committee has raised three issues under Standing Order 24 in relation to the Migration (Character Test) Bill. These all give rise to concerns that provisions in the bill may trespass unduly on personal rights and liberties.

The first concern is that the proposed increase in penalty from 3 years to 5 years for the use of a 'weapon' may be disproportionate because the definition of 'weapon' is so broad that a person could be found to threaten to use a thing to inflict bodily injury without there being any real or significant risk that injury may in fact result.

The second concern is that the current 'character test' provisions already allow past and present criminal conduct to be taken into account and the new provisions could lead to circum­stances in which relatively minor criminal behaviour is used to justify the exercise of these powers without the need for any assessment of the circumstances and details of the offence. Again, the Scrutiny Committee is concerned about whether this is a proportionate response.

The third concern relates to the com­mencement of the 'character test' provisions. The bill provides that they will operate from 26 April, which is the date on which the Minister announ­ced his intention to make these changes. This means that the 'character test' provisions will operate retrospectively, even though the laws could have serious consequences for individuals.

The Committee consistently draws attention to reliance on Ministerial announcements which contain an implicit requirement that persons arrange their affairs in accordance with such announcements rather than in accordance with the law. This approach undermines the principle that the law is made by Parliament, not by the Executive. The practice is of particular concern in the context of the application of laws which have the capacity to affect significant individual interests.

The Committee will seek further information from the Minister about the need for these provisions. In addition, if the 'character test' provisions are considered indispensible, the Committee will request advice about whether it is appropriate to at least limit the types of offences or to specify a minimum term of imprisonment applying to the relevant offences.

The Committee would also like to draw the Senate's attention to its comments in Alert Digest No. 5 on Appropriation Bill No. 2. This Bill is usually for Budget appropriations from the Consolidated Revenue Fund that are not the ordinary annual services of government, but this year it also includes amendments to the Commonwealth Inscribed Stock Act 1911.

The Committee is concerned to ensure that the CIS Act amendments receive sufficient parlia­mentary scrutiny and therefore brings these provisions to the attention of Senators.

In relation to its Fifth Report, the Committee has continuing concerns regarding the Child Support Amendment Bill. A key provision of the bill provides capacity for the Child Support Registrar to delegate all powers and functions to perform his or her duties, including to persons outside the Australian Public Service. The justification for the provision is that it seeks to enable more efficient service delivery, including allowing for the outsourcing of debt collection services.

The Committee previously raised concerns about the breadth of the delegation and that it may have the effect of limiting the application of administrative and judicial review and complaint mechanisms in respect of delegations to persons outside the public service.

In her reply the Minister responded to the issues raised, including expressing the view that the delegation would not change availability of administrative review, that review mechanisms provided by the Act would remain subject to judicial review, and the Registrar would retain a power to review and alter decisions of a delegate.

The Committee thanks the Minister for her response, but remains concerned about the extent and scope of the delegation. The Committee is also not certain that outsourcing to persons outside the public service would, in all circumstances, remain subject to judicial review.

The Committee will seek further advice from the Minister about the proposed delegation power, including whether consideration can be given to the provision of more specific powers of delegation.

In relation to scrutiny concerns raised in previous Digests, the Committee has received replies to the issues it raised in relation to the Customs Amendment (Export Controls and Other Measures) Bill, the Customs Tariff Amendment (2012 Harmonized System Changes) Bill and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Bill.

The Committee thanks all Ministers for their responses.

The full details of these matters are available in the Alert Digest and report I am tabling today, and I commend the Committee's Alert Digest No. 5 of 2011 and Fifth Report of 2011 to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Senator STEPHENS (New South Wales) (15:51): On behalf of Senator Polley, Chair of the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, I present the report of the committee on the exposure drafts of Australian privacy amendment legislation, part 1—Australian privacy principles, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

Senator STEPHENS: by leave—I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move:

That, the final report of the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee on its inquiry into exposure drafts of Australian privacy amendment legislation be presented by 30 September 2011.

Senator PARRY (Tasmania—Chief Opposition Whip in the Senate and Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (15:52): On behalf of Senator McGauran, the deputy chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the 117th report of that committee, entitled Treaties tabled on 9 and 10 February, and 1 March 2011. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I seek leave to incorporate a tabling statement in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The statement read as follows—

I present today the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties Report 117, which addresses treaties tabled in Parliament on 9 and 10 February, and 1 March 2011.

Mr President, this report considers three significant bilateral agreements, and two instruments amending treaties to which Australia is already party.

Of particular interest to Australia’s Slovak community will be the new social security agreement to provide pension portability between our two nations.

The agreement with the Slovak Republic follows a model successfully implemented with some 24 other countries. Such agreements aim to increase retirement incomes for migrants who have spent part of their working lives in either country, and deliver greater choice of residency for all benefit recipients.

Under this agreement, over half of the Slovak Republic aged pensioners in Australia will qualify for entitlements accrued in their homeland for the first time. Australia in turn will have a net social security benefit, as pensions paid here will be offset against Slovak provided funds.

The Agreement also provides that superannuation and pension requirements are due in only one nation at a time. This cuts costs for employers and opens employment and business opportunities in both nations.

Mr President, another treaty in this report represents, in my opinion, a landmark negotiation for law enforcement and co-operation in our region.

The prisoner transfer treaty between Australia and the People’s Republic of China provides a framework of rights and protections for Australian and Chinese nationals seeking to transfer from correctional institutions in the other nation.

Given past human rights concerns, it is important to note that no prisoner will be compelled to transfer. The treaty requires that all parties involved consent to the transfer, and that prisoner are fully informed in writing of all the legal implications.A mandatory requirement under transfer agreements is that the Receiving Party enforces the full term of the original sentence.

Department representatives advised, however, that there is flexibility. The served term may be adjusted through the use of non parole periods, for example.

This provides an important opportunity to reduce sentences of excessive length by Australian standards.

Mr President, the Committee understands that this treaty with PRC has been a long term priority for Government; yet it is two years since China formally advised it had domestic arrangements in place for its ratification.

The Committee urges ratification and implementation of this treaty, to avoid any further hardship for Australians held in China and their families.

The other bilateral agreement dealt with in this report introduces new co production opportunities for film, television and digital media in Australia and South Africa.

Agreements like these should excite Australians, as they do the Committee, given the potential for rich cultural exchange and boosted production activity between two vital media industries.

Finally, I draw attention to the proposed amendments to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in South East Asia, and to the Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

The Treaty of Amity is an important vehicle for Australia’s engagement with ASEAN. The Third Protocol amending the Treaty opens accession to regional organisations like the European Union.

The Committee welcomes this forward-looking gesture, which demonstrates ASEAN’s willingness to engage beyond the region.

The amendments to the Singapore Free Trade Agreement were minor in nature, but the Committee notes in consideration that even minor changes can have major implications. Amend­ments to annotations, for example, dealt with telecommunication regulation in an increasingly competitive international market.

Mr President, to conclude: the treaty actions in Report 117 are not controversial, but neither are they inconsequential to Australia’s national interests. They all have the Committee’s unqualified support.

I commend the report to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Senator STEPHENS (New South Wales) (15:52): I seek leave to revisit for one moment the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee.

Leave granted.

Senator STEPHENS: Following the notice that I gave about presenting the final report on 30 September 2011, I now seek leave to move a motion in relation to this first report.

Leave granted.

Senator STEPHENS: I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

As I say, today I present on behalf of the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee the first report of its inquiry into the Australian privacy amend­ment legislation. This report examines the exposure draft of the Australian Privacy Principles, which are the first stage of the government's planned reforms to enhance the protection of personal privacy in Australia. The government has recognised that the current Privacy Act may not be adequate to protect personal information that is gathered, stored and shared in today's world. Vast quantities of personal information are now transmitted electronically, and many Australians are concerned about the security of that information. As a first step in the reform process, the government requested the Australian Law Reform Commission to undertake a comprehensive review of the Privacy Act. The ALRC took 28 months to complete its review and addressed a multitude of issues in its three-volume report. The government accepted the maj­ority of the ALRC's recommendations in relation to the Privacy Principles. The Privacy Principles exposure draft provides for a single set of 13 principles applying to all entities to replace the Information Privacy Principles which currently apply to agencies and the National Privacy Principles which currently apply to organisations.

While most submitters support the reforms, the committee received a range of views on whether or not the APPs meet the objectives underpinning the need for reform and provide greater privacy protection. The committee acknowledges that drafting a single set of principles was a particularly complex task. However, the committee was concerned that many submitters argued that the new principles are complex, dense and difficult to understand. The committee considers that this is a significant issue. Without clarity, agencies and organisations may find it difficult to comply with their privacy obligations and individuals may not understand how their privacy is protected. As a consequence, the committee has made recommendations to simplify the structure of the APPs and to improve their clarity. Some submitters were also concerned that the reforms may lead to a diminution of privacy protection in some instances. While the committee has made recommendations to reconsider some aspects of the principles, on balance the committee considers that privacy protections have not been weakened.

The committee welcomes the enhance­ment of the privacy regime through the new principles for open and transparent manage­ment of personal information and cross-border disclosure, specific regulation of the use of personal information for direct marketing activities, and restrictions on the use of government-issued identifiers. Evidence provided to the committee addressed the compliance burden on entities arising from the new principles, particularly in relation to complaint handling and obligations arising when personal informa­tion is transferred to overseas recipients. The committee acknowledges that the reforms may result in an increased compliance burden for some entities. However, the committee is of the view that the benefits of the additional requirements outweigh the compliance costs. In addition, the committee notes that many principles include a reasonableness test for the matters or steps to be undertaken, and in some principles the test also provides that no steps need to be taken if it is reasonable in the circumstances. The committee considers that these pro­visions provide entities with sufficient flexibility in complying with the privacy regime.

In conclusion, the committee considers that the Privacy Principles contained in the exposure draft reflect the intent of the ALRC's recommendations. They also will ensure that the standards are in place to address the risk of harm from the inappropriate collection, use and disclosure of personal information and to meet the expectations of individuals that personal information will be handled appropriately. The committee is currently examining the credit reporting exposure draft. The committee will then examine the final two parts of this stage of privacy reform, the health privacy and the powers and functions of the Australian Information Commissioner, when these exposure drafts are available. I commend the report to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I present responses to various Senate resolutions as listed at item 14 on today's Order of Business:

Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr Rudd)—International Women’s Day (agreed to 3 March 2011), World Tuberculosis Day (agreed to 24 March 2011) and the 25th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear reactor accident (agreed to 11 May 2011)

Ambassador of Israel to Australia (Mr Yuval Rotem)—Palestine and Israel (agreed to 11 May 2011)