Recycle ‘levy’ is not a tax on waste

The Albanese government has denied it will slug Australians with a world-first “recycling tax”, declaring a new levy set to come into effect this year will help the country manage its waste on home soil.

But exporters of recyclables have warned the government the new regulatory crackdown, set to come into effect on July 1, would be passed on to taxpayers and exacerbate the cost-ofliving crisis.

The National Waste and Recycling Industry Council, which represents contractors servicing about 80 per cent of Australian households, are calling on Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to carve out paper and cardboard from the new rules for recyclables exporters.

In a pre-budget submission to the expenditure review committee last month, the council told cabinet the proposed changes were essentially a “government-imposed tax on the recycling industry”. Moreover, they said the cost recovery on waste exports was both “unnecessary and a further cost impost” to the industry.

Chief executive Rick Ralph called on the committee to scrap “in its entirety” the introduction of a cost recovery for the waste exports licensing scheme.

“Any tax imposed by government will be directly transferred by our industry to all local government and other contracts, along with the additional industry charges that will be added to this government fee to recover our own business administration costs,” he said.

Ms Plibersek said the new levy had been “coming for a long time”.

“What the previous government said at that time is Australia should be dealing with Australian rubbish, and we should be doing more recycling in Australia,” she said.

“The problem was they didn’t set up any sort of system to achieve their objective.

“So since coming to government, we have been building better recycling infrastructure.

She said the levy “wasn’t in place yet” and government was engaging with industry” about the plan.