ABC Afternoon Debrief with Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek

SUBJECTS: MEDIBANK DATA BREACH; MANGROVE ALLIANCE FOR CLIMATE; SOFT PLASTICS RECYCLING; MURRAY-DARLING BASIN PLAN.
 
JANE NORMAN, HOST: Before the AFP confirmed the hacker's identity, or where they are based, I caught up with the Environment and Water Minister, Tanya Plibersek from Sydney. Minister, welcome tp the program.
 
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Thank you.
 
NORMAN: It's not often that governments decide to attribute cyber-attacks, why has the decision been taken to go public on this occasion?
 
PLIBERSEK: I think it is best to talk to the Australian Federal Police about the decision. What we know is that these cyber-attacks are becoming more common, more frequent and in this case the Medibank case in particular, quite catastrophic for the people involved. We wanted to do anything in this governments power both to catch those responsible, to hold them to account, but also to work with companies that hold such vast amounts of people’s data to make sure that they are holding it safely.
 
NORMAN: This of all the cyber-attacks in recent memory has been particularly shocking, we see that while nobody's published the details but we know that the hackers are placing on the dark web information about people's drug and alcohol problems, there has been information about pregnancy terminations. The most personal health data has been breached here.
 
PLIBERSEK: They are disgusting human beings and people who make a living out of other invading their privacy and causing the sort of distrust. It’s revolting human beings. If you're talking about the criminal syndicates, we shouldn't be surprised. A lot of these big criminal enterprises have their cyber hacking on the one hand, human trafficking on the other and they are really bad human beings.
 
NORMAN: I think we can all agree on that. It's a topic in your portfolio, environment. The COP27 climate change conference is happening right now in each of Australia has joined in the international alliance increasing the global area of mangrove habitat by 20% by the year 2030. What does that mean for Australia?
 
PLIBERSEK: Australia has actually got about 7% of the world's mangroves. And that is fantastic for Australia because mangroves are really vital habitat, they’re fish breeding, crab breeding, bird breeding wonderlands. They are also powerful carbon sequestration opportunities. Mangroves forest sequester carbon of almost five times the rate of terrestrial forests, as well as being great habitat they are really good for carbon sequestration and they also do things like clear up waterways, preventing storm surges along the coast eroding coastal areas. They are just great environmental assets and Australia wants to join with the global community to protect the mangroves we have got, restore and replant mangroves where we can. This is also a good opportunity for some countries to earn money through planting mangroves as carbon sequestration opportunities, earning carbon credits by doing so. It's great that the environment and also potentially really good source of income, particularly our Pacific neighbours.
 
NORMAN: We know 7% of Australia is currently mangrove, we have 7% of the world's mangroves I should say, is there a percentage we want to be reaching here? Is this a binding target we are trying to meet?
 
PLIBERSEK: Today's announcement is not about a binding target for Australia. It's about Australia using our know-how and our expertise to help in the global effort to increase mangrove coverage around the world. We have got five terrific programs at the moment that I funded recently, $9.5 million in protecting mangroves and restoring mangrove areas, restoring seagrass and saltmarsh as well. Those blue carbon opportunities are great for the environment, but if we are able to measure the carbon sequestration benefits we can share the information with our Pacific neighbours and actually look at carbon farming opportunities as well.
 
NORMAN: Another issue you have been talking about today Minister is plastics, because REDcycle Australia's largest soft plastics recycling program has basically paused collection from Coles and Woolworths. You have said it is up to the supermarkets to come up with a solution here, but should it be up to corporations if the Government wants this to happen, why won't you regulate?
 
PLIBERSEK: Well, the Government is absolutely ready to do our bit. We have set about $250 million to upgrade recycling facilities. We will do that in partnership with states and territories and the private sector. $60 million was set aside in the last budget specifically for these soft plastic and difficult to recycle plastics to make sure that we have got the facilities here in Australia to recycle. I'm absolutely up for doing our bit is a government. We know that these industries are huge producers of plastic waste. So it is really important for them to do their share as well as well. Coles and Woolworths have said in my conversations with them that they accept that they have a responsibility in the first place to reduce the amount of plastics that they are using, and in the second place to make it is here to recycle plastics wherever possible. We know that the previous government impact sets ambitious targets for Australia to be diverting about 70% of plastics from landfill by 2025. We are so far away from achieving that at the moment. We have been sitting at 16% for the last four years so we really need to lift our game. In fact Australians are huge users of raw materials. We need to get the design better, we know about 70% of waste is embedded in the design phase of products, so we need to design-out the waste we are using in products. And then we need to reduce the use of plastics. We need to reuse, recycle. And just this week I put plastic medical waste onto the minister’s product stewardship list along with tyres and mattresses. I'm showing that we are prepared to put industries on notice, to regulate and we have said we will work with the solar industry now to regulate to reduce waste from solar panels. We are prepared to do that, but it is important for the private sector to do their share as well. And of course, stats and territories and local government have a huge role to play here as well.
 
NORMAN: Before I let you go, at Senate estimates today, departmental officials have said work has commenced what they are describing as a strategic buyback for 46 gigalitres of water as part of the Murray Darling Basin plan to meet environmental targets in the plan. Can you explain what a strategic buyback is and are you confident they can find these 46 gigalitres through these so-called strategic buybacks?
 
PLIBERSEK: Well, I've said all along that buybacks are on the table when it comes to meeting the objectives of the Murray-Darling Basin plan. We are a long way at the moment away from achieving that really important plan. Of the 450 gigalitres of additional environmental water, the previous government got around to meeting two gigalitres of that target. So we’ve got a long way to go. Strategic buybacks mean we are going to look across the Murray-Darling Basin system and where there are areas where we can have low-impact, good value for taxpayer dollars water buybacks, then we are going to examine those opportunities. And I can tell you, we’ve had a number of unsolicited approaches already. I'm sure that when we go into the market for those strategic buybacks, there will be people who are interested in partnering with the government to see that water returned to the environment. It seems crazy to be talking about this at the moment, and there is so much water across the system, and  in fact so many people are suffering from too much water, towns flooding, in the case of Lismore, the third time in 15 months. But we know that Australia, in time, we'll be back in drought and got to use this opportunity, this breathing space we’ve got now to get the Murray Darling Basin plan now.
 
NORMAN: Minister Tanya Plibersek, thank you for your time.