By Jolene Ogle
It’s clear an election is on the horizon with Queensland State Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls hitting the Sunshine Coast and Noosa for a range of announcements and meetings this week.
Mr Nicholls laughed off suggestions he was on the campaign trail, saying he simply enjoys meeting people in the community and remained coy on whether there would be a new seat announced in the Coolum area when the boundary redistributions were announced on Friday 24 February.
Mr Nicholls did say the LNP would run a candidate in the seat of Buderim, but there was no word yet on who the candidate might be.
Mr Nicholls joined Member for Noosa Glen Elmes in Noosa on Thursday (23 February) for a visit to the Eumundi Road and Resource Recovery Centre to commit to the LNP’s promise of a container deposit scheme.
Before answering a barrage of questions about One Nation, the coming state election and preference deals, Mr Nicholls said the container deposit scheme (CDS) helped keep the environment clean and supported the community.
“This is a scheme that pays people to return their empty containers. They can either do it through reverse vending machines or they can do it where they bought it,” he said.
“If there are people who choose not to do that, there are community groups that have the opportunity to share in up to almost $25 million to support their activities and help them keep our community clean.”
Mr Nicholls said over 30 million plastic bottles ended up in landfill each year and even more that ended up in local waterways and on the road.
“This is good for the environment, it’s good for consumers and it’s great for helping support community groups,” he said.
The Labor Government has so far conducted a 12-month feasibility study of the CDS and has released a discussion paper about the implementation of the scheme, but Mr Nicholls said this is simply “navel-gazing”.
“It’s a crazy amount of navel-gazing about something that just makes environmental sense,” he said.
In a statement to the media in July last year, the Labor Government confirmed Queensland would have a CDS by 2018.
Environment Minister Dr Steven Miles said at the time that Queensland and NSW had entered into high-level talks about setting up a single-scheme administrator.
“We want a seamless system that’s good for the environment and friendly for business. No-one wants an outcome where the rules that apply to a bottle of soft drink sold at Tweed Heads, are different to the one you buy at the Gold Coast,” Dr Miles said.
“A single administrator could cover both states to deliver the highest level of efficiency and effectiveness.”
