Clean Up Australia Day

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (15:30): Over the last 26 years, Clean Up Australia Day volunteers have donated more than 31 million hours removing more than 331,000 tonnes of rubbish from their streets, beaches, parks, bushland and local waterways. On Sunday morning, members of the Torrens community will be joining me for this great annual Clean Up Australia volunteer event. Residents, including members of the Windsor Gardens Neighbourhood Watch and Windsor Gardens Residents' Association, will volunteer their time to clean up along the walking path and banks of the Torrens in Windsor Gardens.

On the official website of Clean Up Australia, it says that the 331,000 tonnes of rubbish that has been cleaned up over the past 26 years is equivalent to end-to end-fully laden utes from Sydney to Brisbane via the coastline. It is really amazing to think that this homegrown initiative, the brainchild back in 1989 of sailor and lover of the world's marine ecologies, Ian Kiernan AO, has grown into Australia's largest community-based environmental event.

Many of us can remember how different our suburban and regional areas were before we became aware of the damage that pollution can do. There was a time when our beaches, parks and bushland were littered with glass and plastic bottles, food packaging and cigarette butts. Our waterways were depositories for unwanted items large and small, and our roads were lined with debris tossed without even a moment's consideration from passing cars. Many people then thought little of it and, while today many more are environmentally aware, we still have a long way to go.

Released in March 2016, the annual Rubbish Report showed that the chief contributor to the tonnes of garbage removed on Clean Up Australia Day was plastics, which has in fact averaged 30 per cent of the total collection over the past 10 years. In South Australia, we are enthusiastic recyclers and of course we have a container deposit scheme that is the envy of other states, but plastics are still a problem, as the numbers show.

Those discarded bottles and food packaging are produced from non-renewable resources using coal, natural gas and oil. They take tens and even hundreds of years to decompose and are a major component of our landfill. Of course, we know that they can cause serious problems where they cannot be seen. They are light and they float easily. It is estimated that every year more than 46,000 pieces of plastic per square mile of ocean enter our seas, and we know they are deadly to marine life.

It was Kiernan's participation in the 1987 BOC Challenge solo around the world yacht race that inspired Clean Up Australia Day. Sailing through the oceans of the world in his yacht, Spirit of Sydney, he was shocked and disgusted by the pollution and rubbish that he encountered in areas such as the Sargasso Sea and the Caribbean. On returning to Sydney, he initiated Clean Up Sydney Harbour in 1989, receiving an enormous public response, with more than 40,000 Sydneysiders donating their time and energy to clean up the harbour. The following year, 1990, the first Clean Up Australia Day saw almost 300,000 volunteers turn out, and that involvement has steadily increased ever since.

The next step was to take the concept of Clean Up Australia Day to the rest of the world. With the support of the United Nations Environment Program, Clean Up The World was launched in 1993. In its inaugural year, Clean Up The World involved approximately 30 million people in 80 countries, and that has grown to an estimated 40 million people from 130 countries annually taking part.

Clean Up The World has demonstrated that this simple Australian idea has universal appeal, and the health of the environment is a concern to people and communities worldwide. One Indian-born Australian resident of Torrens told me that our message about caring for the environment in which we live as part of Clean Up Australia and Clean Up The World has been adopted in India, where the Prime Minister invited staff, ministers and staff members to clean up their suburbs—an interesting idea.

Clean Up Australia Day is a demonstration of community pride, of the power of volunteering and of the interest and care we take, individually and together, in making our unique living environment cleaner, healthier and more sustainable. That relatively small local initiative, launched by Kiernan 29 years ago, has grown into the huge national event Clean Up Australia Day, in which tens of thousands will participate in Australia on Sunday. I thank in advance the residents of Torrens and others who join me on Sunday morning in Windsor Gardens. Their contribution to help protect and care for our environment is greatly appreciated.