Page 3924 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
they encounter. Some retailers in the ACT have also signed up to the national trolley tracker notification service, which, as members may be aware, is an information service that encourages members of the public to report any abandoned shopping trolleys that they find, in exchange for the chance to win prizes.
Despite the current arrangements, abandoned shopping trolleys still appear in the ACT, littering our suburbs and creeks, and I know all members are aware of this. Indeed, I think there has been some further advance in relation to attempts by some supermarkets in particular to deal with this issue, with cash deposit type arrangements in relation to the use of trolleys. It is pleasing to see the sector engaging with the issue, but I think all of us would acknowledge that the steps that are currently being pursued simply do not work and there is a role for government in taking a more proactive responsibility.
The government therefore believes that, while Ms Le Couteur’s bill would certainly go some way to solving the problem of abandoned shopping trolleys, a more effective process for dealing with the problem would perhaps enhance compliance with the legislation. So the amendments which I move reflect the government’s proposal that offers a scheme that more firmly places the onus on retailers to do the right thing by the community and manage the abandonment of their shopping trolleys. The amendments will also provide a financial disincentive to deter retailers from failing to collect their trolleys and leaving the government to do the job.
Both the Greens’ bill and the government’s amendments to it rely on three broad remedies to discourage abandonment and other improper uses of shopping trolleys in the ACT: namely, the creation of offences against the improper use of shopping trolleys, the provision of identification on shopping trolleys to assist their collection and the proactive trolley collection scheme that allows the government to respond to a problem in a specific area where retailers are not responding. I have already referred to some differences between the government’s and Ms Le Couteur’s proposals, but I will now go into some detail of the differences.
Both Ms Le Couteur’s bill and the government amendments create strict liability offences for the misuse of shopping trolleys. The offences are, however, cast differently. Ms Le Couteur’s bill has created a strict liability offence of leaving a shopping trolley in a public place. The government amendments create an offence of failing to comply with the direction of an authorised person under the Litter Act, or a police officer, when he or she directs an individual to return a shopping trolley to a retailer’s premises. In the government amendments, an authorised person or police officer may issue a direction to return a shopping trolley, where a person has taken a shopping trolley from a shopping centre precinct or is using a shopping trolley in a place outside a shopping centre precinct or has left the shopping trolley at a place outside the precinct.
The offence in the bill focuses on abandoning a trolley in a public place, while the offence in the amendments focuses on the removal from or use of a trolley outside a shopping centre precinct. This recasting avoids the situation at present in the bill, under which it would be an offence to abandon a shopping trolley in a public place like a local park, but not an offence if the trolley was abandoned, say, on private property—for instance, the front lawn of a house.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video