Rees tries to take carbon credit ( Source NSW Greens Media)
“The bread and circuses approach to running the State has reached a new
low with Premier Rees announcing a ban on bottled water in Government
departments. As Minister for Water, Nathan Rees didn’t bat an eyelid
when the community at Peat’s Ridge objected to Coca Cola/Amatil
extracting 66 million litres of water from Mangrove Mountain. The
company paid the NSW Goverment $200 for a water extraction licence and
are now selling it in plastic bottles for more than $10 million a year.
“We’ve sold a public asset, for a token amount and now the Premier
has made a token gesture in response – and it’s the public who has to
pay for the mess, mostly through council rates. By jumping on the
bandwagon being drawn by the sensible people of Bundanoon, Premier Rees
is trying to score an environmental point – it would be funny if he
wasn’t in such negative carbon credit,”
“The Premier has responded – with about one minute’s thought –
to the real public concern about the damage that drink bottles are doing
to the environment and about the mountains of unnecessary waste.
Australians spend roughly $385 million on 250 million litres of bottled
water year and only a third of these get recycled. Every five bottles
takes one litre of crude oil to make.”
“Less than a month ago, both the Labor Government and the Opposition
voted to oppose my Private Member’s Bill that would have given NSW a
complete container recycling scheme – for all drink bottles and
recyclable containers along the lines of South Australia’s scheme.”
“The Government threw away a $33.8 million dollar income stream from
the recycling market. They voted against reducing in fossil fuel
consumption, substantially reducing rubbish on our streets, beaches and
parks, slashing council rates, providing consumers with an easy
incentive to recycle, and creating hundreds of green jobs.”
“The Bill was a no-brainer for popular appeal and an easy fix for
the environment. Consumers would get a 10 cent return on their
containers. The Bundanoon ban shows that people are crying out for
action on waste.”
“We are five years away from the proposed NSW Waste Recovery target
for a 66% increase in recycling by 2014. From 2002 -2008 in NSW it
increased by only 2%. In South Australia the recycling rate is over 80%
compared with the NSW rate of less than 40%.”
“Premier Rees’ attention grabbing gesture makes a mockery of the
people of Bundanoon who have taken decisive action against environmental
degradation. As we can see from his recent actions, the Premier is not
doing anything serious about water and waste or to curb the excesses of
the bottling industry and their lobbyists.”