Tuesday, 1 April 2025

Waste and recycling management

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (03:23): (1546) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Environment. The action that I seek is that funds from the waste levy be provided to the City of Whittlesea and other municipalities to offset expenses associated with managing illegal rubbish dumping. Illegal rubbish dumping is a prolific and serious problem across Victoria. Too many people would rather cheat the system and dump their waste instead of arrange for councils to collect it or take it to the tip themselves. Not only is it a health and safety risk, dumped rubbish is also a visual blight on the streets of our communities and creates a perception among residents that their neighbourhood is being neglected. Dumped rubbish still has to be collected, and it is local councils that end up paying the cost of dealing with hard waste that has been dumped illegally.

As rubbish dumping continues to increase, the cost to councils is going up and up, pulling money and resources away from core services. Many individuals and businesses who dump rubbish illegally do so to avoid the municipal and industrial waste levy sometimes known as the landfill levy. The waste levy was $130 a tonne, but the Allan Labor government has legislated another tax increase and from 1 July this year the waste levy will increase by 30 per cent to $170 a tonne. We can expect a lot more illegal rubbish dumping when the levy becomes more expensive. But councils cannot expect any extra help from this Labor government in dealing with dumped rubbish, and that needs to change. I am asking the minister to provide funds from the waste levy to local councils to offset the increased costs they face as illegal dumping rises. Money collected by the waste levy goes to the EPA, which then distributes portions of it to key environmental agencies before handing most of it to the Sustainability Fund.

The Sustainability Fund is legislated in section 449 of the Environment Protection Act 2017, and its first stated purpose is to foster environmentally sustainable uses of resources and best practices in waste management, with a second purpose of supporting initiatives that reduce greenhouse emissions or adapt to climate change. Even though the Sustainability Fund gets its money from the waste levy, most of the money it distributes does not go to better waste management. The fund’s activities report from 2023–24 says that it gave away $156 million and that over half of that money went to climate change initiatives. The cash balance of this fund in 2023–24 was $393 million, and it is projected to climb to $1.7 billion by 2027–28. This fund is a cash cow that gets its money from the waste levy, and local councils want a share of it to help divert waste and deal with illegally dumped waste, which will only get worse when Labor’s waste tax becomes even more expensive in July.