Whilst this is a great initiative by all the mainland states of Australia except for Daniel Andrews' Victoria, a deposit of 10c is nowhere near enough. Back around the middle of the 1960's, I recall getting 3c or 5c deposit for reach returned soft-drink bottle. [1] I think the deposit for each bottle in 2018 should be at least 50c, given that the Australian dollar has depreciated to roughly 1/10 of its 1966 value. I also think that such an amount would more accurately reflect the actual cost of manufacturing a good quality re-usable beverage container. [2]
The deposit scheme, which allowed myself and other kids to get extra pocket money by collecting discarded soft-drink bottles, came to an end after 1966 or 1967 (from my recollection), when, suddenly, the Coca-Cola corporation stridently announced on a large-scale television promotion that:
"Hey, do you know that you can now get Coke in Cans!"
I somehow doubt that other soft drink consumers shared the excitement of the Coca-Cola Corporation at this new initiative. My own heart sank, seeing an end to my additional earnings from refunded soft-drink bottles. So, instead of beverage containers being returned and reused, they were, from then on, to be added to our landfill, urban environment, parklands, bush and oceans, whilst an ever greater quantity of raw materials were to be extracted from the earth to replace the discarded cans and bottles.
Footnotes
[1] Soft-drinks, which contain sugar, are a major health hazard. They are particularly harmful to diabetics and could cause a non-diabetic to become diabetic. If people drink soft drinks, they should be of a variety which contain no sugar. One product with artificial sweetener and no other additives is Waterfords mineral waters.
[2] Back in the mid-90's, I think, somebody put forward a proposal that all beverages be stored in standardised refundable beverage containers. If all beverage producers were able to use the same container to store a given volume of beverage, then the cost of producing that beverage would be substantially reduced. Whilst, by my recollection, this proposal received some prominence in the national newsmedia for a while, it seems to have been quitely dropped and forgotten. I would greatly appreciate if If anyone else could confirm this and other recollections of mine and, possibly, provide greater detail.
Property values a pretext to charge for population growth costs
Back in 2007, [1] then Prime Minister John Howard proclaimed that Australian home owners should welcome high immigration driving up the property value of their homes. In saying this, Howard seemed indifferent to the plight of other Australians who had to pay much higher rent or who faced the struggle to pay off even higher mortgages in order to have a roff their head.
Now, in 2018, those Australians who supposedly gained from housing inflation, have now found their property rates, based on the valuation of their homes, are expected to climb an extra $100 per year which is above the supposed Victorian state government rate cap of 2.25% per annum as reported (behind a paywall) in the Herald Sun. [2]
Whilst property values increases are the excuse for the imposition of rate increases, the real reason is the ongoing increase in costs per capita to maintain existing services - footpaths, roads, power, garbage disposal, transport - for a population that has long since exceeded its optimum size.
So, not only is our quality of life being eroded through greater traffic congestion, loss of open spaces, native fauna and flora and loss fo social cohesion as a consequence of imposed population growth, but we also are losing in hard economic terms.
Much of the supposed economic prosperity is because services we did not need at all before population growth, or if we did, we needed much less of, creates opportunies for the provision of those services.
Footnote[s]
[1] I am not certain if this was said in 2007 or as early as 2005, but I did have this confirmed in a copy of the Age of Victoria
[2] See Rising property values to push rates above 2.25 per cent cap (3/6/16) (or "Rates about to rise" in the printed version) | Herald Sunby Ian Royall.