A new recycling tax could find its way into Australian household budget amid ongoing cost of living pressures.
Under the proposed scheme, from July 1, exporters of recyclables will be charged $30,000 (US$19,494) for a licence, and a fee of $4 on every tonne of recyclables exported overseas.
This is despite warnings from the council representing recycling contractors that the new legislation would mean tens of millions of dollars of extra costs will be passed on to Australian taxpayers, as well as potentially creating more landfill.
In Australia, paper and cardboard make up 48 percent of the recyclable waste.
The National Waste and Recycling Industry Council (NWRIC) argued in a pre-budget submission to the expenditure review committee in January that the new levy would “impact every Australian consumer.”
“Council submits that the proposed cost recovery, which we maintain is a government-imposed tax on the recycling industry in Australia, will impact every Australian consumer, adding an additional cost impost on already fragile budgets,” NWRIC Chief Executive Rick Ralph wrote in a letter to Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones in January.
“Any tax imposed by the government will be directly transferred by our industry to all local government and other contracts along with additional industry charges that will be added to this government fee to recover our own business administration costs.”
In the letter, Mr. Ralph said, “Export regulation of paper and cardboard delivers no demonstrated social, economic or economic benefits to the people of Australia.”
Australians to Bear the Cost
In an interview with Sydney’s 2GB Radio, Mr. Ralph said the scheme was first introduced under the Morrison government but the Albanese government took it one step further.“In this situation, we were ambushed, where, about two years ago, there was a draft paper produced by the Department of Environment, and even in that draft paper was a fee of $3.98 for every time that we recycled or send overseas to international trading markets.”
He noted that the industry would “pass it straight through to the keeper” and taxpayers would need to “cover their administration costs for our industry that is completely not required.”
“Every single person will pay for it,” he said.
“The more you recycle, the more you'll have to pay the government.”
Australia had the fourth highest income tax in the world, according to 2022 data by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The council has been urging Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to prevent the new levy from taking place.
The minister said the proposed rules had been “coming for a long time” but the government was still communicating with the industry.
Ms. Plibersek blamed the former government for not setting up any system to fix the problem.
‘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 which was to recycle Australian paper and cardboard,” she added.
“So since coming to government, we have been building better recycling infrastructure.”
