Push to tackle our plastic waste

TASMANIA needs to invest in a local high-temperature waste disposal facility so it no longer has to send rubbish interstate, the State Liberal Council has recommended.

An original motion from the Sandy Bay Branch at today’s Liberal Party State Council meeting called on the State Government to provide a special purpose grant to the Chemistry Department of the University of Tasmania to investigate a high-temperature process to dispose of plastic waste.

The motion was amended to become a call on the government to invest in a waste facility off its own bat, and it was passed.

“The problem of plastic waste is particularly acute in Tasmania due to limited alternatives for disposal,” the motion said.

“There are many opportunities for the profitable utilisation of plastic waste products that range from direct re-forming through to high temperature treatment, resulting in the plastic being broken down back to their source petrochemicals.

“It is odd that apart from a few hi-tech installations that burn the plastic for heat energy there seems to have been no technological advances in this area. It is tempting to imagine that with extreme Green ideology so prevalent there is no appetite for advances in this area.”

Tasmania has been struggling with the question of how to deal with its waste this year after piles of rubbish, usually sent to Victoria, built up at SKM in Tasmania’s South due to that company’s financial difficulties.

Another motion which recommended Tasmania change to a new time zone — half an hour in front of Australian Eastern Standard Time — so we could enjoy more late afternoon sun was defeated.

The New Town/North Hobart Branch acknowledged the motion was “a little bit quirky and out there”, while a speaker against it said it was the “stupidest idea he had ever heard”.

The State Government will also be asked to review the Local Government Act in regard to a rates exemption for villas and units owned by notfor-profit entities.

“While high dependency aged care facilities operated by not-for-profit entities have always been exempt for the general council rate, in recent years there has been proliferation of villas and units managed by these same not-forprofit entities,” the motion said.

“In some councils there are now hundreds of such dwellings exempt from rates but placing extra rates burden on the remainder of ratepayers. It’s neither fair or efficient that a pensioner living in a unit on the other side of the street from a lifestyle village pays rates while the neighbours across the road do not.”