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Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson isn’t impressed with Tanya Plibersek’s response to the revelations Coles and Woolworths soft plastics recycling programs aren’t happening:

It’s unacceptable that once big packaging corporations whack a recycling label on packaging, the Government thinks it can wipe its hands clean of responsibility.

The Government can’t keep passing the buck on recycling. Minister Plibersek today said it shouldn’t be beyond big companies like Coles and Woolworths to come up with a viable solution to soft plastic recycling.

I’m disappointed with Minister Plibersek’s comments. The attitude and culture of governments leaving this problem to big business to sort out is why we’re in this mess. Big businesses have no incentive to fix the problem, they’re only interested in their bottom line.

Australia’s recycling industry has been crying out for the Government to introduce mandatory national packaging targets in order to have the confidence to invest in the infrastructure and technology necessary to recycle things like soft plastics right across the country.

An export ban on sending plastics overseas for recycling should’ve provided a welcome boost for Australia’s recycling industry but successive governments have failed to take the most basic of steps to make us self-sufficient waste and recycling managers. If recycled content in packaging and government procurement of recycled content were mandated, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Every day the Government fails to take meaningful action on recycling is another day our environment suffers and another day that Australians miss out on thousands of job opportunities that could be created in a true circular economy.”

The Greens have announced they will vote for the IR bill in the house (where the party’s vote isn’t needed to pass it) but will have more to say about it when it reaches the senate (where the Greens vote does matter)

Lisa Cox

The environment and water minister Tanya Plibersek says Coles and Woolworths need to “step up” and explain how they will deal with recycling of soft plastics in the wake of the collapse Australia’s biggest soft plastics recycler REDCycle.

Plibersek said:

It shouldn’t be beyond these big supermarkets to come up with a viable solution to allow Australians to continue to recycle.

I expect Coles and Woolworths to step up and indicate how they will deal with soft plastic recycling. We’re happy to work with them to achieve this.

Their customers want to do the right thing, Coles and Woolworths should too.

REDCycle announced the suspension of its programs on Tuesday night after the Age reported soft plastic items customers had dropped off at Coles and Woolworths supermarkets were being stockpiled in warehouses and not recycled.

At last month’s meeting of environment ministers there was agreement to work with the private sector on phasing out waste and pollution like ice cream wrappers and pasta packets by 2030.

Plibersek said on Wednesday almost a billion pieces of soft plastic had been recovered by the REDCycle program since 2011 and the problems it was now facing were “unfortunate”:

Like many Australians, I feel bad when I am forced to put soft plastics in landfill and I do my bit to take them down to my local supermarket to be recycled. I want to ensure Australians will be able to keep recycling their bread bags and plastic sachets.

She said soft plastics were worth money, including to Coles and Woolworths, given plastics collected by REDCycle had been recycled into items such as Coles trolleys. They had also been used for roads, footpaths and garden edging.

Plibersek said the government had set aside $60 million to increase soft plastic recycling and provided $1 million to the Australian Food and Grocery Council to work with industry to develop more sustainable solutions for their soft plastics.

Over in department of social services estimates, there seems to be some hint towards a target within the national plan to end violence against women and children.

That came from questioning from Greens senator Larissa Waters, who was asking questions of Deputy Secretary Families and Communities, Liz Hefren-Webb

Waters: Okay. Thank you. Is it the Government’s aspiration to ensure that no one who seeks help from a frontline domestic family or sexual violence service is turned away for lack of resourcing.

Hefren-Webb:

So obviously the Government’s expressed its aspiration to end violence against women and their children. But I think a target that’s around ensuring people have access to services and support when they need it is something that I think would be central to an action plan.

Waters: So, okay, because obviously one of the key criticisms of the National Plan was the lack of measurable targets. So is that – you’ve just hinted – is that a target that could be in scope for either of the First Nations or the non First Nations action plan?

Hefren-Webb:

It’s certainly an area where the Government and Ministers have talked about it being important to have targets, not only overall targets about prevalence, but targets about services and support and people being able to access what they need.

Sarah Martin

The Greens senator Nick McKim is asking Treasury about the government’s new housing accord, which has an “aspirational target” to build a million new homes in the five years from 2024-25.

McKim is asking how many of the million would be built by the private sector regardless of the accord, pointing to the 995,000 homes built over the past five years.

Laura Berger-Thomson from Treasury said that while the forecast over the next two years was for 180,000 housing starts a year, beyond that the number was expected to decline.

Although we have the 180,000 completions over the next three years, given the rise in interest rates, we would expect that there’d be a decrease in homebuilding activity subsequent to that, as the effects of those interest rate rises kind of flow through to the construction sector, which we know is sensitive to interest rates,” she said.

“So I think our best guess…given the economic situation, that there would actually be if there wasn’t kind of policies in place, there would actually be substantially less than the 1 million built… We’re confident that the one million homes is a target which actually does genuinely increase the supply of dwellings.”

McKim is questioning what the difference in housing stock would be without the accord.

“It is a meaningless figure, isn’t it? McKim says.

The Finance minister Katy Gallagher emphasises that it is an aspirational target.

It’s an aspirational target informed by the delivery of what’s happened over the past five years, and extra effort going in by the Commonwealth states and the territories.”

The Liberal senator Anne Ruston is also asking whether the Treasury has done any modelling to show how many extra homes would be built under the accord.

Somebody can’t live in an aspirational target, can they?”

Greens Senator David Shoebridge has also tried to push Treasury on the deductible gift recipient status granted by the former Coalition government to the Future Leaders Foundation charity of Governor-General David Hurley, but received few answers about the specific listing.

Sarah Martin

Liberal senator accused of ‘inappropriate’ characterisation of social housing

The Liberal senator Jane Hume has had a crack at the government’s focus on social housing amid discussion about the former Coalition’s Homebuilder program.

Treasury officials have explained that the pandemic program, which was designed to boost demand and confidence in the market, had been budgeted to be worth $680m but blew out to $2.7bn. The program was uncapped and demand-driven.

The program provided 24,000 grants to assist with renovations, of a total of about 105,247 grants. Laura Berger-Thomson from Treasury said the renovations “needed to be substantial”.

Vera Holenstein, an assistant secretary at the Treasury, said the amount for the renovation needed to be between $150,000 and $750,000 for people to be eligible, with the aim to stimulate the construction industry.

Labor senator Deb O’Neill asked whether there were any restrictions on what the money could be spent on, asking whether gold taps, bidets and swimming pools were allowed.

Holenstein said an applicant needed to have an income under a certain amount, but was unable to provide the figure. She said swimming pools and granny flats were excluded, and the value of the property needed to be less than $1.5m.

At this point, Hume interjected, saying:

Put them in little boxes, little boxes of social housing, would be so much better

The remark prompted O’Neill to call for Hume to withdraw the remark.

[It] is an inappropriate way to characterise social housing and all Australians who grew up in it and rely on it and need that roof over their head.

PM aims to emphasise commitment to net zero and regional stability at upcoming summits in Asia

Anthony Albanese is about to hit the skies again. The prime minister is headed to international and regional summits in Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand from 11–19 November, including Asean, G20 and Apec.

In a statement, Albanese said:

Australia has always been an outward facing nation and we have never shied away from facing up to global challenges.

The global economic outlook is stark, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated the challenges of food insecurity, rising energy prices, rising inflation and cost of living pressures globally.

Australia strongly supports Asean’s central role in the region and its vision for the region is closely aligned with our own.

My role at these summits will be one of advocacy for not only Australians, but also for … our Pacific neighbours who face many of the same pressures that we do.

At each summit I will emphasise Australia’s commitment to the global transition to net zero, and our vision for a stable, peaceful, resilient and prosperous region.

I will remain, on behalf of the Australian people, a fierce opponent to Russia’s immoral and illegal invasion of Ukraine.

I look forward to engaging my counterparts in Phnom Penh, Bali and Bangkok in the next week.”

Josh Taylor

AFP Operation Guardian to be expanded to protect exposed Medibank customers

In the wake of a ransomware group beginning to publish Medibank customer data on the dark web overnight, the Australian federal police has announced that it will expand Operation Guardian – which was set up to protect the 10,000 Optus customers who had their personal information posted online earlier this year – to those Medibank customers exposed.

AFP assistant commissioner cyber command, Justine Gough, said in a statement:

Operation Guardian will be actively monitoring the clear, dark and deep web for the sale and distribution of Medibank Private and Optus data.

Law enforcement will take swift action against anyone attempting to benefit, exploit or commit criminal offences using stolen Medibank Private data.

Gough also said people should not try to download or access the data themselves, saying it may constitute a criminal offence.

We use the powers and authorities of all of our agencies to disrupt the sale and distribution of the unlawfully-obtained data.

Operation Pallidus is the investigation into the Medibank cyberattack itself. It is the other AFP operation in partnership with federal government agencies, and Five Eyes law enforcement including the FBI.

Paul Karp

Meeting with Chinese leaders would be ‘a positive thing moving forward’, PM says

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has been asked if he will be meeting the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, or president, Xi Jinping, at the forthcoming G20 and East Asia summit.

Albanese said his trip will be a “very busy nine days” and the government is still finalising the program – but he left open the possibility.

Albanese told reporters in Canberra:

I’ve made very clear that dialogue is a good thing. And so if a meeting is arranged with Xi, then that’s a positive thing moving forward. We are organising a range of meetings – but they haven’t been finalised … We’ll make an announcement if and when meetings with various leaders are locked in.

Daniel Hurst

Back to defence estimates and there has been an exchange concerning the basis for predictions by the former government that a guided weapons enterprise would eventually create more than 2,000 jobs across the supply chain.

Greg Moriarty, the secretary of the department, said drily: “You’d need to ask the former prime minister. It was his press release.”