Page 3329 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 September 2005
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MR HARGREAVES: One of the things this amendment bill talks about is when people are suspected of having littered by putting things outside charity bins, dumping stuff on the road and all that sort of stuff. There are two offences under this legislation. One is when you are caught red-handed. Our rangers have done that and they have given on-the-spot fines. One of the questions from Mr Pratt was whether or not those fines were legal. He cast some doubt on whether people have the authority to require people’s names and addresses. The answer to that is that they are legal. The reason for that is that the people who were handed on-the-spot fines by the rangers volunteered their names and addresses at the time. It is no wonder, when they are caught red-handed doing it, that people, generally speaking, will comply with that, but we want to tighten up that particular area.
Mr Pratt talked about car bodies. Mr Pratt knows that we have a program that identifies and removes car bodies in this territory. I think the urban services department, through the rangers and through arrangements with the police and the community, do a fine job of it, quite frankly. Mr Pratt knows the procedures only too well; I will not go through those. He knows only too well that car bodies abandoned on the side of the road are removed fairly quickly and that there is always an attempt, using the VIN numbers and any registration details, if they are around, to track down the people responsible for the dumping. Action is taken against those people when we can determine who they are.
In respect of shopping centre trolleys, Mr Pratt misses one of the significant points about shopping centre trolley stuff. It is not litter only; it is theft. When people take a shopping trolley away from the shopping precinct to put stuff into their car, or wherever else, they are required to return it. If they do not return it and dump it in the lake, that is theft, not only litter. He would know that the rangers regularly pick up trolleys. We also pick them up from our waterways and we pick them up from elsewhere. I was out at the Phillip depot just the other day, in my journey around the department, and I noticed a great big skip. It was the biggest skip I have ever seen, I have to tell you. It had all manner of things in it—milk crates, shopping trolleys and things. They are recovered. I think they do a reasonably good job of that. I consider the dumping of trolleys to be both theft and littering. If we can catch anybody doing that sort of thing we will deliver the same treatment to them as anybody else caught littering or dumping stuff outside charity bins. I think that was an unnecessary comment and rather silly.
Mr Pratt was vocal about the state of garbage bins in shopping centres. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the responsibility the community must take for the cleanliness of this city. It is not a job for government only. Shopping centres are owned by people; they are not owned by the government; they are private premises. If the shopping centre management want to put more garbage bins or skips around the place, ACT No Waste would be delighted to hear from them. Of course, this crowd over here would have us believe that it is totally the government’s responsibility. That is the furphy they want to put out there—that, if you see litter around the place inside a shopping centre, it is the government’s responsibility because they have not given them enough bins.
I think they should go and have a chat to some of the shopping centre managers, use the influence they purport to have on them and ask them, “How about putting some more bins around?” We will provide them; all they have to do is ask. Most of the shopping
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