Waste Management

Mrs POWER (Elder) (15:03): My question is to the Minister for Environment and Water. Can the minister update the house on the consultation recently completed regarding the single-use plastics discussion paper?

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (15:03): Thank you—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister has the call.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: Thank you, Mr Speaker and I thank the member for Elder for her question. It's always good to be able to update this house on the government's approach to waste management. Of course, after 16 years of Labor, we are all involved in waste management policy.

However, specifically, I want to talk about the state government's approach to single-use plastics and our consultation that we initiated earlier this year to seek the views of South Australians, whether that's households, community organisations or businesses, into potentially a phase-out of some single-use plastics, which the government wants to take a serious look at. It is very disappointing that the opposition have had a very lukewarm approach to this policy direction. Their lack of contribution to the public debate when this was announced was exceptionally disappointing.

This is certainly something that the South Australian community has an interest in. There has been an increasing gathering of opinion and views on this. You regularly see it on social media and you see documentaries and current affairs shows covering the environmental impact of single-use plastics on a regular basis. We see countries across the world, not just Western countries but developing countries as well, taking a stance to look at reductions in single-use plastics.

Earlier this year, the government released a discussion paper called 'Turning the tide on single-use plastic products' to discuss with South Australians what direction we should head in with this policy. At the same time and in parallel, we are reviewing the container deposit legislation (CDL) to see if that is fit for purpose and able to meet the needs of our current waste management strategy for the state. Those two bodies of work are ongoing.

In particular, I want to update the house on the outcomes of the consultation in terms of how much interaction there has been. We had 3,226 survey responses. This was one of the most significant surveys the state government has undertaken since the YourSAy website was established several years ago, coming in at the fourth highest engagement the state government has done through that electronic platform. There are clearly a very significant number of people keen to have their say on this matter.

Of the survey responses, 98.9 per cent of completed surveys answered yes to the question, 'Do you consider single-use plastic products are causing environmental problems?' and 96 per cent of people who started the survey actually went through to completion of the survey, which is a particularly high level of engagement.

We have received over 100 written submissions, which have now been provided to Green Industries SA, the organisation formerly known as Zero Waste SA, which is embedded within my portfolio. We will now have an opportunity to go away, dig into those results and provide an analysis back to South Australians and to members of this house so that we can understand a policy direction going forward.

There is absolutely no doubt that South Australians want action from the government on this front, and there is a real interest in government leading the way. There are already plenty of things happening in the community. We know this is an area that will create jobs and trigger investment from the private sector, and it is incredibly important for government to send a market signal along those lines.

One day last week, I was able to head down to an organisation called Peakfresh, which has just invested substantially in creating compostable bags—the first to be manufactured in Australia. It is a great example of a South Australian company investing as a result of this market signal.

The SPEAKER: The minister's time has expired. The Leader of the Opposition.