Page 5287 - Week 14 - Thursday, 19 November 2009
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There are those in our community who abuse the privilege that they are being offered to buy and use fireworks. There are those who let them off outside the regulated hours. There are those who seek to disrupt residents’ rights to a quiet enjoyment of their urban amenity. There are those who scare people and animals.
There are claims, too, that people use fireworks to make explosives to blow up letterboxes and cause other property damage. Although most of us have from time to time in our childhood, seen, and perhaps even participated in, the blowing up of letterboxes—usually insubstantial ones in country towns—I am unconvinced that the fire power required to blow up an Australia Post letterbox can be obtained from a modern-day firework.
A huge number of fireworks would have to be dismantled and re-assembled to extract sufficient explosive for the purpose. I am more persuaded to the suggestion that either home-made explosives, easily manufactured from available recipes on the internet, or illegal fireworks are used for this purpose. The bottom line here is that the people who abuse their privileges are, by a long shot, in a minority and the government is simply not doing enough to enforce the regulations it has spent so much time and effort tightening.
I acknowledge the efforts the government has made over a long period to tighten up the regulations. The considerable number of documents that I obtained under the Freedom of Information Act—not, however, from the Department of Justice and Community Safety—clearly demonstrate that the government and the bureaucracy in particular have gone to great lengths to review and tighten the regulations.
There was even something of an exclusive group and mentality in the bureaucracy, which was highlighted in one email where the salutations started, “To my fellow firework suppressors.” However, once again it is a case of a government that is incapable of backing up policy with the resources required to implement or manage that policy, or perhaps it is simply that the government does not have enough imagination and inventiveness in the formulation of its policy in the first place.
I also acknowledge the process of public consultation over a long period. Again, the FOI documents obtained indicate the extent of that consultation. My question, however, is whether this government has actually given any credence to the outcomes of that consultation. I suggest it has not. I suggest that this government has given credence to the side of the debate advocating a ban and has considered little on the other side of the debate.
The most telling piece of consultation is three telephone surveys that were conducted in October 2007, June 2008 and August 2008. The 2007 survey said that the community was equally divided on the question. By October 2008, 56 per cent of Canberrans agreed that fireworks should be available and 41 per cent disagreed with that notion. That is quite a difference and even if the remaining three per cent undecided were to join the disagree group, that would be a split of 64 to 44—still a substantial difference.
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