The label of "single-use" plastic shopping bags has been questioned by Wodonga-based MP Tim Quilty, who says the bags are convenient and easily re-used.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Victorian Parliament's upper house this week passed the proposed ban on plastic shopping bags, which will come into effect on November 1.
It has been supported by both Labor and the Coalition, but not the Liberal Democrats.
"I have always kept my single-use plastic bags and I find them very useful," Mr Quilty told Parliament this week.
"This sentiment is echoed in a famous Play School song: 'If we didn't have bags, what would we use to put a lot of things in?'."
The Northern Victoria MP said people often use the bags as bin liners, to dispose of dog droppings or to keep wet clothes separate in luggage.
He argued that plastic bags make up a small portion of items in landfill.
"The reason bags are being singled out for a ban is not because people litter them at alarming rates - they do not - it is because they are popular," Mr Quilty said.
"Big retailers have already replaced their thin plastic bags with slightly thicker plastic bags that they can charge for.
"A cost to business is being converted into a cost to consumers, and I have a car boot full of them."
Sustainability Victoria has stated about 150 million plastic bags end up in Australia's oceans and waterways each year.
IN OTHER NEWS:
But Mr Quilty said a ban would be hard on small retailers and on lower income earners, and would rather focus on other issues such as littering.
"We will not support criminalising normal behaviours, penalising small businesses, pushing costs onto consumers or making things worse for the environment just to pretend that we are doing something good," he said.
"Of course our green activist elites, with their high-paid jobs in air-conditioned offices, are not concerned about the impacts on ordinary people."
Euroa MP Steph Ryan was one of the Nationals members to support the plastics ban, calling it "a fairly commonsense kind of decision".