Morrisons pledge on ocean waste - a shiny plastic distraction from climate policy

August 15, 2021 â€" 5.00am

In May 2007, then prime minister John Howard, a rugby tragic, attended a Wallabies game in Sydney. Also at the match was Daniel Clarke, a 10-year-old Sydney kid with cerebral palsy, who was there as part of a pledge from the Starlight Foundation.

The Wallabies triumphed, and both fans â€" PM and schoolkid â€" were invited to the dressing room after the match. Howard, ever-classy and genuinely interested in people (rare for a politician), knelt down next to Daniel’s wheelchair and chatted to him. Daniel told him about his passion â€" saving the orangutans of Indonesia.

William and Daniel Clarke, aged 9 11 , meet then prime minister John Howard. Credit:YouTube

After the encounter the PM asked Daniel’s dad for his business card, and wrote down on the back of it: “Daniel, orangutan, $10,000.”

A few months later, in August, Howard sent Daniel a letter announcing his government would give $500,000 over four years to help preserve orangutans in Indonesia. Everybody loves orangutans, and the pledge got a lot of media coverage.

It was a lovely news story, and a distraction from a central fact of the election Howard faced in November that year: the Coalition was seen as outdated and lacking urgency on the issue of climate policy.

Kevin Rudd was elected in a landslide in November 2007. He was seen as a man of the future. The orange apes of Sumatra and Borneo never got their money (Labor environment minister Peter Garrett did not honour Howard’s promise, telling Daniel there was “no funding program available to support this activity”). The orangutan pledge became an eccentric footnote in the wild and chaotic ride that is Australia’s environment policy.

I was reminded a little of the orangutans when Scott Morrison started talking about his government’s plastics pledge. In September 2019 the Prime Minister told the United Nations General Assembly that “we need to take action on climate change, but there are actually issues like plastics in our oceans which present even more immediate threats”.

In March 2020, speaking at the National Plastics Summit in Canberra, Morrison said there was a need to increase demand for recycled plastics. He talked about the giant floating island of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean â€" three times the size of France â€" and said he had to see a picture of it before he could fully believe it.

Morrison said a bunch of things he would never say on the subject of climate change, such as, “we have a responsibility to leave our children better than what we inherited”. And: “Our Pacific family has not caused this problem, but they have to deal with the impacts of it on their fisheries, on their wildlife and islands.”

Morrison promised to change Commonwealth procurement rules so agencies were required to consider “environmental sustainability and the use of recycled content” when making procurement decisions. Later, the government talked a big game on providing specific recycled material procurement targets by the end of 2020.

Reader, they never did.

Australia has very little infrastructure to recycle its own plastics, and despite the government making funds available to the private sector to develop this infrastructure, almost no one has accessed them. It is widely acknowledged that much of the plastics waste Australia can no longer dump on other countries will go into landfill here. When we put plastics faithfully into our yellow bins, that’s where they will probably end up.

The government has not introduced targets to require manufacturers to use a certain amount of recycled materials in their products. And why would anyone invest in recycling when there is little demand for the products?

Morrison’s critics say the plastics pledge is a big shiny distraction from the Coalition’s emissions-reduction travails. That it has little substance and little new money put towards it. They also point out it only came into being after China and Indonesia (followed by Malaysia and Vietnam) refused to take any more plastic waste imports.

On another view, the problem was forced on Australia and the government has attempted to make a virtue of it. It is laudable â€" just like saving orangutans, no one is ever going to object to a policy which clears beaches of milkshake straws and old nappies, and saves seals from being strangled by a six-pack plastic ring.

Politicians will tell you ocean plastic waste is something school kids care a lot about. It is also something of a “safe space” for Liberals, particularly those moderates representing urban electorates where voters have high levels of environmental concern. They can talk about the environment without mentioning the C-word â€" climate.

Queensland recipients of the Young Australian of the Year award, Daniel and William Clarke, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison in January this year. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

But the plastics pledge could also be classed as a “look over here!” policy designed to distract from the disaster-zone that is the Coalition’s track record on climate policy.

This week’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed carbon emissions reduction is the single most pressing environmental issue, and the situation is even worse than we thought. Climate change represents an existential threat to civilisation.

The plastics pledge is informative for a few reasons. First, it shows the Australian government will act if forced by other countries to do so. Second, efforts to “build demand” for environmentally positive industries have little heft without mandated targets that provide certainty and reduce the risks of investment. Lastly, it shows that not all environmental policy is created equal.

Addressing plastic waste does not make up for the lack of meaningful action on climate change. Any turtles you save from choking on Coke bottles will only die off in their overheated oceans.

Postscript: Daniel Clarke and his brother William were announced this year as Queensland Young Australians of Year for their work on orangutan conservation. Daniel, now 24, is still in touch with John Howard, who he describes as a mentor. When Daniel was studying political science at Macquarie University, Howard would ring him regularly to chew over the issues raised in his degree.

Twitter: @JacquelineMaley

Jacqueline Maley is a columnist.

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