Mackey Moana: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17586] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on Part 3 of the Waste Minimisation Bill. This is a very important part of the bill and the Local Government and Environment Committee spent a long period of time discussing the pros and cons of many of these parts. A lot of these matters have been outlined but I want to mention again the reasons the select committee decided to change the waste disposal levy from $25 a tonne to $10. We heard a number of submissions and the concern was that if we started off lower we would probably be able to bring more people in without—as many members have said—running the risk of illegal dumping which would go against the entire intention of this bill as Nicky Wagner has already said. This amount will still bring in a significant amount of money to begin the levy fund. 
As my colleague Steve Chadwick said we felt that it was a question of balance. We do not know that we have got it exactly right. A lot of this tends to be a case of just picking figures out of the air based on one’s best estimate but in consultation with the sponsor of this bill Nandor Tanczos we decided that $10 per tonne was the best way to go to start with. It was a point of much contention on the Local Government and Environment Committee. Numerous committee members—and people may be surprised to know who they were—contended that it should be a lot more than that to start off. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Who was that? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I could not possibly say. As the chairperson of the committee I take my responsibilities very seriously. But it was the topic of much much discussion. 
All members of the Committee and all members of this House will be watching with much interest to see how this part of the bill develops and to see whether the revenue raised from the levy is enough to meet the demands of territorial authorities and private groups that are interested in waste minimisation initiatives. Certainly at the select committee it was amazing to hear from the wide variety of groups and from the territorial authorities about what they were doing in this area and what they wanted to do and about the fact that they felt constrained by not having a fund such as this to assist them to do that. 
The other issue we spent a lot of time discussing and it was another one where we were never going to please everybody was how the levy should be split between territorial authorities and private organisations and whether there should be a split. We settled on fifty-fifty as a split between the two. Again it was our best effort to find a compromise. One of our main concerns was that we did not want to penalise those territorial authorities that had already made great strides in this area at their own cost by saying: “We’re now going to pay for those territorial authorities that have not done anything to do what you are already doing but you yourselves cannot apply to this fund to pay for advances in what you want to do.” 
I take on board the comments made by Nicky Wagner about making it clear that the money is fairly distributed when it goes to the territorial authorities. My concern is around some of the wording. We need to clarify this because I do not think we have a definition of “waste services” in the bill. My concern is that when we do not put definitions in legislation we potentially open it up to an enormous amount of litigation. I think that is just a wording thing and I hope it is something we can sort through here in the Committee stage. But certainly when I looked at the beginning of the bill I saw that we do not have a definition of “waste services”. In an area like this where we are likely to get some contention between the numerous groups out there that do not want any money going to territorial authorities and that want it all to go into a contestable fund I think we need to be very careful to close off every loophole possible towards the matter going to judicial review or some kind of litigious argument about what a waste service is and whether a group is actually doing a waste service because our committee has not come up with that definition. I just flag that concern off the top of my head about that particular Supplementary Order Paper. 
The other Supplementary Order Paper the member mentioned relates to extending from 3 months to 6 months the amount of time waste can be deposited before it is considered disposed waste and subject to the waste levy. I think that is a good compromise. Although I could see the advantages of taking it out to 12 months our concern was that that could potentially mean there would be no funds in this levy fund until 2010 and that is certainly not what the select committee intended. I do not know that that is what would happen but given that it is a possibility I think that 6 months is a good compromise. It gives flexibility for the different groups to meet that concern and it also allows us to address the other concern. Thank you.