Carter John: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
Carter John: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
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JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 Well I answer to a good number of names so another one would not matter. Hone Carter— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: He has had occasions in this House where he has been much funnier than John Clark—a stunning member. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Well occasionally that is true—how nice is that! Only a few of us would understand that I tell Mr Mallard. But I think Eric Roy would; he was in the Chair at the time I seem to remember. 
It is a great pleasure to talk to the Waste Minimisation Bill. I start firstly by congratulating Nicky Wagner on all the work she has done. She has done a tremendous amount of work on this legislation and she deserves to have that noted and to be congratulated on that. I also say to the select committee itself that it was a pleasure to work with all members of the committee and with the staff and officials who worked with us on it as well. As I have said before in this Chamber but it is worth repeating I approached this bill with an attitude developed from wearing a black bush singlet out the back of the Hokianga thinking “Here’s a tree-hugging greenie waste of time.” I must say my attitude has changed absolutely. As we went further into the bill I realised that this issue deserved this House’s time and indeed the focus of not just the Parliament but of the country and in that sense the Greens are to be congratulated on bringing this legislation into the Parliament so that it can be debated. 
Having said that I say that the bill is virtually a complete rewrite of what it was originally. I think the Greens also acknowledge that as well. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: A very good Minister. 
JOHN CARTER 
: We certainly cannot congratulate the Minister in the chair the Hon Trevor Mallard on his input into this bill. I think it is fair to say that the Minister in the chair did not take a lot of notice of it until very recently and only then did he start to change his attitude in the same way I did. 
There are a couple of points that need to be debated and Nicky Wagner talked about what is probably the main issue around this bill. One of the problems and challenges in the select committee was that we continually talked about waste. The problem with that is that it sends the wrong signal. This is not a bill concerning waste or a waste bill; it is about a resource. It is about finding a way to address the resources we have that others have finished with or want to dispose of. One of the challenges was trying to find an appropriate title for the bill. One of the titles we came up was the “Resource Management Bill” but then we thought that probably would not go down too well given that we already have a Resource Management Act and it would conjure up a whole lot of negatives in people’s minds. It was not appropriate to call this bill the “Resource Management Bill (No 2)” or some other take on that title. There is a need for us to shift people’s minds to understand that we have a tremendous amount of resource that we continually just throw away and that is stupid quite honestly. The committee took a lot of time to try to find ways to address this. 
Of course what happens at the moment is that waste management or resource waste management or whatever we are now going to call it—waste and resource management—has become the responsibility of local government. As a consequence it is the ratepayers of this country generally who end up footing the bill. That means it is the end-user or in a lot of cases not even the end-user who ends up carrying the financial responsibility. An argument has been put forward and it is one I support that the cost should be up front. The reason is that we would then get a total change in attitude and responsibility. It means that the people who are producing a lot of the stuff that currently is called waste would suddenly take a different look at it. One of the things we have talked about is product stewardship which has become a major issue that this House and this Parliament need to address—and we have addressed it to some extent in this bill. But the fact is that those people who produce and make the products—the wrapping all the stuff that is associated with current waste—need to change the way in which they address it. 
To be fair a number of manufacturers who came before the select committee suggested they were quite happy to become involved. I remember the car manufacturers for example came before the committee to say that they would be quite happy if a voluntary levy—$500 for a start—was put on each new car they sold. That levy could then stay in a fund somewhere during the life of the car and when the car finally reached the end of its life instead of it being taken into the bush chucked over a cliff burnt out left on the side of the road or whatever it would have a value that the final owner could go and redeem. The vehicle itself then would be recycled and reused. That to me makes a whole lot of sense. It means that several things would happen. All of a sudden there would be a fund of money to help us to be involved in better investigations science and the systems around waste management and resource recovery. It would take the pressure off local government so that ratepayers were not responsible for it. It would also mean that the resource now had a value so that the end-user the final person who ended its life had something of value. But just as important the country would have an opportunity to utilise the resource and lots of businesses—probably smaller businesses—would be established. It would mean in that particular case giving financial security to the people who are in the resource-recovery game. That to me is the nub of this whole debate. We would be ensuring that those good people who are already in the system have the financial means the cash flow to ensure that their businesses are sustainable. It would also mean that we can encourage others to get involved in resource recovery. 
For that reason the title suggested by Nicky Wagner makes a whole lot of common sense. Nicky and I took the opportunity to go to South Australia to look at the system there. I must confess that I certainly was impressed with their system and I think Nicky learnt a lot from that visit as well as did a number of the officials who went with us. It showed that the system could work. We discovered in South Australia that for example the Scout Association—just to name one organisation—now has a turnover of some $13 million a year and it has made a profit of about $2 million a year out of the system it has. This is all based on the fact that it has a product stewardship system and a levy that allows for that financial recovery to be made. Those things are important in this legislation. We will continue to debate those things as we make progress on the matter and as it becomes more acceptable in this country. It already is acceptable but it still has a way to go. We will find that those sorts of attitudes will become part of our society. 
The one thing that the committee was concerned about on the way through was that we did not just set up a system that would develop another bureaucracy. The last thing we need in this country is more bureaucrats and we certainly do not need them in this area. One of the things that we were very careful to try to achieve was that we did not set up a structure that became over-bureaucratic. We did not want to also put in a system that caused more cost to local government. I think that at this stage we have found a happy medium with this bill. I think that as we move forward in this debate and as the bill is implemented and reviewed from time to time by the Minister who is in charge of it—whoever that may be—we will find that further amendments are necessary. This will not be because the bill does not work but because it is time to expand the bill and this will become the norm for us. I think that is a very good thing indeed.