What were the results that kind of shocked you without spoiling it because we want everybody to go and watch The Plastic Country? Yeah.

I'm happy to share as well.

I think it's important for people to know because the big focus that I think a lot of Australians have when we think about plastic, when we think about sustainability is we always think about what we can see.

We think about the photos of birds with plastic caps and bottle caps and just microplastics all through their bellies.

We think of the videos of plastic bags washing up on beaches and we just have these like visual desires of like this is crazy, like this visual problem is really bad.

But what I was learning through the journey filming this is that for plastic, firstly, it's made from oil and fossil fuels, which is quite bad.

But the main sort of driver for me is actually the 16,000 chemicals that are used to make plastics and only about a quarter have been tested for human safety.

guess you could call it?

What do you think of this decision by the government to shelve plans to get more recycled plastic used in packaging?

Yeah, mate, it's pretty disappointing.

I feel like being, I guess, a young guy travelling around the country the last couple of years really exposing what plastic's doing to our shorelines, what it's doing to our animals and what it's doing to our own health.

It's pretty sad to see that, you know, the government today have taken a great step to protect people with social media and, you know, stepping up to big tech.

And I just don't understand why they're not protecting Australians from the impacts of plastic.

Like, it's crazy what it's doing to our health, what it's doing to our shorelines, our waste industry.

Like, it is just... yeah unapologetically disappointing

are you surprised because you're speaking with a lot of politicians like they're probably telling you one thing are you concerned surprised that this decision's been made quietly to to shelve this plan

um,

Everyone at home, I look them up, like they are doing the most incredible work.

And they started their journey sort of looking at all the stormwater drains.

Like that was their start of a lot of their project.

And they just realized like how much plastic's washing up.

And what Bryce Liddell said when I was interviewing him was how plastic is showing up like midden.

And I think when we think about this problem and we think about, all right, well, what are humans in 50 years, 100 years going to look back at 2026 humans and think, what were they thinking? Like there is, you know, this is the plastic sphere we're in and we're just leaving like this planet so much worse for future generations.

So we just literally just got to pick them up and run hard at them.

[laughs]

Yeah, 24.

And, uh, ScoMo's, um, yeah, part of my electorate.

So it's a very conservative part of the country, not like our beautiful Wentworth and this area here.

Um, but yeah, managed to get elected in, uh, yeah, sort of a platform to just look after the ocean because it is such a core value for a lot of us Australians.

But the work I'm doing now, and I guess probably why I'm on this panel, I co-founded with Cooper Chapman, who's just at the back, um, a program called Blue Minds, which sort of brings together particularly his world of mental health, um, and the work, incredible work he's done.

Written a book, podcast, spoken to over 60,000 Australians all over the country about mental health, and my sort of world of the ocean and looking after it.

So w- obviously working with the younger, the younger generation, how are they uptaking what to do with recycling, things like that? I mean, what are they doing with their plastics?