The Australian Greens will push for a Senate inquiry into illegal waste dumping following damaging revelations on the ABC’s Four Corners program last week.

Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson says federal parliament must scrutinise the issues raised in the program, which exposed a network of waste transporting and freighting companies allegedly sending waste by road and rail to Queensland to avoid paying New South Wales millions of dollars in tariffs.

He has also called on the Turnbull government to release a threat abatement plan to show how it intends to combat the threat posed to marine life from plastic in Australia’s oceans.

He said the federal government should ban plastic bags in Australia if state governments did not do it soon.

“We want to see the federal government taking action on federal product stewardship schemes on the waste that we know makes its way into our oceans, breaks up into millions of little pieces, and kills marines life,” Whish-Wilson said. “We now know we’re eating toxic plastic when we consume seafood in this country.

“This should be a political no-brainer. Any politician out there, when they go and speak to their electorate, will hear that they want us to act.”

Whish-Wilson said the Greens would push on Thursday for a Senate inquiry into the allegations raised in last week’s Four Corners program.

The program alleged there was corruption within the NSW waste industry, and that the Environmental Protection Agency knew of the illegal waste dumping but failed to prevent it.

Steve Beaman, the EPA’s director of waste management, has reportedly taken four weeks’ leave after the ABC released a recording of him joking about the interstate transfer of rubbish to Queensland from NSW.

Whish-Wilson said a Senate inquiry must look into the matter.



“We’re going to have to step in and actually scrutinise what’s going on in the recycling industry in this country,” he said on Wednesday. “It’s very important that the federal government makes a statement on this issue.

“So far there’s been silence from the environment minister. He knows that he should have a federal, fully-integrated management plan that outlines product stewardship schemes for various categories and wastes that we’ve seen raised in Four Corners.”

Whish-Wilson also called on the Turnbull government to release its threat abatement plan for marine plastics.

A spokesman for environment minister Josh Frydenberg told Guardian Australia the Threatened Species Committee would consider a revised draft of the plan at its meeting in November, before it gets presented to the minister.

The film A Plastic Ocean was played in Parliament House on Tuesday evening, focusing on the devastating impact plastic is having on marine ecosystems. .

It is estimated that between four and 12m metric tonnes of plastic makes its way into the ocean each year. This figure is only likely to rise, and a 2016 report predicted that by 2050 the amount of plastic in the sea would outweigh the amount of fish.

A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change.

Jayne Paramor, the deputy director of Boomerang Alliance – which represents 47 national, state and local groups – said marine pollution posed an “enormous” problem for Australia.

“This is one of the most significant problems we face on multiple levels across the country,” she said.

“Australia relies hugely on our oceans from a recreational and economic point of view, and the health impacts that we are beginning to understand, as a result of this problem, are significant”.

Liza Dicks, Sea Shepherd Australia’s national coordinator, said Sea Shepherd had been running a marine debris campaign for the past 18 months and had collected 800,000 pieces of debris from 200 beaches, 68% of which was plastic.

“We believe there is no time to waste, our oceans are our life support system,” she said.