Plastic Shopping Bags (Waste Avoidance) Repeal Bill - Second Reading speech
Wednesday 5 February 2025
S.E. ANDREWS (Gibson) (16:46): I rise to support the Plastic Shopping Bags (Waste Avoidance) Repeal Bill 2024. This bill, or the plastic bags act, bans lightweight singlet-style plastic shopping bags that are less than 35 microns in thickness. South Australia led the nation on the phase-out of lightweight plastic bags when the act came into force on 4 May 2009. It is always worth doing the maths, because you always think that was only a couple of years ago, but it was a really long time ago. This was under our former Rann Labor government, something that we are all very proud that they instigated and began changing the behaviour of South Australians.
Now, the Malinauskas Labor government is extending prohibitions on single-use plastic shopping bags by utilising the more modern and more broadly scoped Single-use and Other Plastic Products (Waste Avoidance) Act 2020, or single-use plastics act. This strengthens efforts to remove plastic film shopping bags of any thickness from circulation in South Australia by broadening the scope of prohibited plastic shopping bags. This will include plastic shopping bags already banned under the plastic bags act, making the plastic bags act redundant and in need of repeal.
As a leader in Australia, because our behaviour is so normalised—and a number of members have talked about how common it is for all of us to take our own bags to the supermarket and to have as little plastic in our lives as possible—sometimes when you travel overseas and see the amount of plastic that is thoughtlessly applied to almost every product, it can be really confronting because our behaviour is so accepted now. It gives you cause to reflect on the influence that a government can have on changing our behaviour. Of course, so many individuals are motivated to do anything they can in every act they do to support our environment, but it really is our government that is able to instigate this broad-based change.
The plastic shopping bags bill seeks to repeal the plastic bags act. In summary, the plastic bags act bans retailers from providing a customer with a lightweight, checkout-style plastic bag, defined as a carry bag that includes handles and comprises polyethylene and a thickness of less than 35 microns. Biodegradable bags and heavyweight plastic bags are not banned under the plastic bags act.
The regulations set out signage requirements in relation to the banning of lightweight checkout-style plastic shopping bags from a prescribed day. That was back on 4 May 2009. The Single-use and Other Plastic Products (Waste Avoidance) (Prohibited Plastic Products) Amendment Regulations 2024 under the single-use plastics act include plastic shopping bags already banned as well as banning all plastic film bags, no matter the thickness, and plastic laminated paper shopping bags.
The current plastic bags act includes an exemption for Australian Standard certified compostable shopping bags. This exemption has been included in the draft single-use plastics regulations, as well as additional exemptions for reusable shopping bags made from plastic materials such as nylon, polyester and non-woven polypropylene.
Penalties under the single-use plastics act are broader and higher than those under the plastic bags act. Under the plastic bags act, the offence is limited to a retailer providing a plastic shopping bag. However, the single-use plastics act contains an offence to sell, supply or distribute.
I do note the member for Newland reflecting on her time as the recycling monitor at school and the campaign she led, and that she wrote to Jane Lomax-Smith at the time. She is not alone in running mini campaigns in her community. As a family, we used to regularly go to the food court in the Central Market on a Friday night and out of the blue the landlord shut the central kitchen down, which meant that, whilst all of the small shopfront food outlets were obviously cooking their food out the back, the central dishwashing services were no longer available, so many of the shopfronts suddenly started serving on plastic plates and with plastic cutlery.
You might not be surprised that the next week I was out with a petition so I could write to the landlord. I went around to all the consumers in the food court for a couple of weeks to get them to change the decision and provide dishwashing services to all the food outlets in the food court at the Central Market. So I think the kinds of changes that we are making in this community are very easily acceptable, and I commend this bill to the house.
