The City of Fremantle's attempts to ban plastic bags from its shops again appear in danger of being thwarted by Barnett government opposition.
Liberal MP Peter Katsambanis has moved to disallow a new bid to state parliament from the City of Fremantle to change regulations to ban plastic bags.
The city has been trying to ban plastic bags for more than two years but keeps running into strong resistance at a government level.
Fremantle's first attempt in late 2013 was knocked back because it proposed shoppers who wanted a plastic bag would be charged 10 cents.
That was ruled out of order on the grounds the city didn't have the authority to impose such a levy. It returned this year with a modified plan that didn't include a charge.
And that's the one Mr Katsambanis objects to.
"An initiative like this should be introduced on a statewide basis. It's not something that should be allowed ad hoc. It's a recipe for creating confusion in shoppers and retailers," he said.
"Just imagine a border road between, say, Fremantle and Melville, where you have retailers with shopping bags on one side of the street and those with none on the other."
Mr Katsambanis believed that Fremantle wanted to "go it alone" and that claims its mooted ban on plastic bags could be a state trial were "a lame duck excuse". He also refuted claims about waste reduction and environmental protection.
"They're minimal. When a ban was introduced in South Australia, sales of bin liners - that use more plastic - increased by 85 per cent, Mr Katsambanis said.
"The same thing happened in Canberra. Shoppers moved across the border into NSW and shopped in Queanbeyan. It was catastrophic for small ACT businesses.
"The City of Fremantle is not an island. If we're going to ban plastic bags, let's do it properly - and that's at a state-wide level."
The acting mayor of the City of Fremantle Josh Wilson said that he was "bewildered" by the response.
"We have done everything by the book. We have consulted local businesses and the wider community and we have a broad consensus to the initiative," he said.
Mr Wilson said the city was progressive by philosophy and was keen to provide leadership on what it saw as a social issue an important contributor to reducing plastic waste.
"Generations to come are going to wonder what we were thinking with the mountains of non bio-degradable waste that we created and continued to use in the face of contrary evidence," he said.
Greens MP Lynn MacLaren said single-use plastic bags could take hundreds of years to break down in landfill.
"Even worse, they often end up polluting our natural environment and become a major threat to wildlife," she said.
Ms MacLaren said that City of Fremantle was well known in WA as a local government with a beyond business-as-usual commitment to sustainability.
"There can be no mistake that the current state government is deliberately standing in the way of the City of Fremantle which has done its homework and developed a local law that its local constituents have demanded," she said.
"The proposed ban could have provided a trial move towards phasing out plastic bags; a move many consider to be long overdue."
The stage is now set for both sides to prepare their arguments.
Mr Katsambanis's motion for disallowance will appear in parliament notice papers on Thursday for later debate.
