Carter John: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
Carter John: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17582] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 Thank you Madam Chair for the opportunity to speak on Part 3. I want to make three or four comments. Although I was not in the Chamber I listened with interest to the debate this afternoon and I want to make two points that I think are important. First of all I thank all the members on the Local Government and Environment Committee. When this bill first came before the select committee I thought: “Oh bless my soul here we go again! It’s another Green tree-hugging leftie what-a-whole-lot-of-nonsense bill.” 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: You did not! 
JOHN CARTER 
: It is funny; the member might think not but that is exactly what I thought. I thought: “Fancy having to put up with this!” 
Well as time went by and I got more and more into it I became a convert as I think every member of the select committee did. It has been a steep learning curve for someone like me with my black bush singlet from the back of the Hokianga. It has been great to have the opportunity to consider this bill—to the extent that Nicky Wagner and I took the opportunity at the invitation of Warren Snow to look at the system in South Australia and I will talk about that. But I have to say that all the members of the select committee—including the chair members of the Opposition as well as the Government and the Greens—have worked constructively together to make this a better bill for the betterment of New Zealand. The fact that the bill is before the Committee in this form is a testament to the fact that select committees work. 
One of the great debates the select committee had—as you will know Madam Chair because you were one of the erstwhile members of the committee—was about the title of the bill. The title is the first thing that New Zealanders need to start getting their heads around. When we have used bits of paper like the one I have here we screw them up and chuck them away—I hope I do not need this bit of paper now—and we call them waste. Well I might be finished with this bit of paper but it is not waste at all. It should be considered a resource. When I have finished using this pen and I chuck it in the bin it might not be of any use to me any more but it will be of use to somebody somewhere. It is a resource. 
The tyre on a car that someone has finished with can be a resource for someone else too. Indeed in that regard I make the point that car manufacturers come before the select committee. They said they wanted something called container deposit legislation. I know that a lot of people will tell me to wash my mouth out because those are terrible words to use in the New Zealand Parliament. But the manufacturers said that if a brand new car worth $30000 could be sold for $30500 they would put the $500 aside in a bank—not in one of those institutions that might collapse—where it would stay. The car would pass through people’s hands and finally reach its end-user whoever that may be—and it is likely to be someone impoverished like me from the back of the Hokianga. What I normally do with an old car is drive it into the bush and set fire to it where it becomes a pollutant and causes problems to the environment. But I could take that car back and claim the $500. It would be worth $500; it would have some value. [ 
Interruption 
] I could take the member’s car back as well. 
Hon Member 
: What about my bottles? 
JOHN CARTER 
: That is the point. I heard someone say earlier that Venn Young talked about putting a price on bottles. Well when I was a lad which was just a couple of years ago we used to collect 2c on each bottle. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Bottle drives. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Yes. The Scouts and the Girl Guides did bottle drives. A whole lot of us did. 
The point is that those bottles were not waste. They were resource because they had a value that was worth redeeming. That is why I bring our attention to this provision in the bill. Here we are talking about a levy. We have a levy because we want to put a punitive tax on people who are disposing of what they consider to be waste. We want to encourage them because of the cost to consider it not as waste but as something that is of use to somebody. The reason we do that is so that we can encourage them to see that the things they consider waste are actually someone else’s resource. 
In that regard I make the following point. What we are doing again—and I must say I am a little concerned that some local bodies have actually bought into this—is saying that the end-user is responsible for the disposal of that bit of waste. So whom do we turn to? We do not turn to the manufacturer we do not turn to the retailer and we do not turn to the user—although we ask the user to pay. Instead we tell local government that it is the last man standing that it is its fault and that it must get rid of the waste. We say: “Here is John Carter’s bag of rubbish—you get rid of it Mr Mayor.” The point is that we are continually loading stuff onto local authorities. They have accepted the responsibility. In fact because of the cost to a lot of local authorities they have asked for this levy so that they have a way to mitigate their expenses and actually find other alternatives. 
The issue is whether that is the best thing we can do with regard to what people call waste but is actually a resource. I say it is not. I say—and I am pleased I am in Parliament saying this tonight—that in time we too will adopt the system that Nicky Wagner and I saw in South Australia. It is too early yet and it will not happen tomorrow but there is some discussion of it in the bill. What will finally happen is that we will get to the stage where we have a thing called container deposit legislation or the like right across the country on every item that is brought into this nation. We will have it because it is a sensible way of making people responsible up-front for the end-use of the item. It means that people will automatically think: “This isn’t a bit of waste that I can just chuck away. It actually has a value in our society.” 
The reason why lots of people are opposed to it is that they think they will be disadvantaged because of the cost. Well if this country applies it correctly then there is no competitive disadvantage. If it is applied equally right across the board on every product at a proper level then it is paid for upfront but consumers pay for it as they purchase. Then they get it redeemed at the end and the person who actually turns it into another product gets the value for it. 
The final point we need to consider is that everybody pays for waste in this nation—everybody. It does not matter whether finally it is the local authority the ratepayer the consumer the retailer or the manufacturer. The way in which we deal with waste these days is a cost on society. But if we turned the issue round looked at it the other way and said: “This is not rubbish; this is actually a resource and we can get value from it.” then it becomes something we can value. Part 3 leads us part-way down that path. But I look forward to the day when this bill continues to strengthen and I look forward to the day when finally this nation accepts that we have a tremendous resource in the stuff we call waste. .