Page 4148 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2019
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items that are litter. This allows for a staged approach, including education and awareness, a show cause and a notice to remedy, followed by an abatement order where appropriate and where other mechanisms have not been successful.
We are pleased to see that the government is now recognising the particular issue of dangerous litter and is bringing in a strict liability offence for aggravated littering of specific items listed by regulation, such as syringes and cigarettes. We will now have caught up in this area with the standard in other Australian jurisdictions.
We are pleased to see that the government is finally addressing the issue of abandoned vehicles. We support the new provision that enables an abandoned vehicle to be treated as litter once it is deemed abandoned and then disposed of immediately when the vehicle is of no, to low, value, for example, a burnt-out wreck. Where the car is of significant value, it must be disposed of within a short time frame. This is another area where I get a lot of calls from constituents, especially when cars are in their neighbourhood and have been abandoned. In some cases, residents feel that up until now it has been taking far too long to remove them.
Another example was a burnt-out car near Lake Tuggeranong in the car park near the learn-to-ride park that took a while to be removed. The removal of litter in a timely manner reduces the significant cost of impoundment of those abandoned vehicles to the territory. I believe this will be very welcome to many Canberrans.
We take a position of support for the bill today, acknowledging that it has taken a while to get to this point and acknowledging some lack of will on the part of the government to enforce the existing legislation. We hope this does not continue when these changes have been passed through the Assembly. Notwithstanding the comments that I have made, the Canberra Liberals will support the passing of this bill today.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (3.49): I thank Minister Steel, his office and the staff at TCCS for their engagement since this bill was tabled. We have engaged since the beginning because the Greens have had, and still have of course, significant concerns about this bill. The positive is that the Litter Legislation Amendment Bill 2019 represents a major overhaul of the Litter Act 2004, and the Greens actually are supportive of the majority of the bill’s content.
Minister Steel has already provided an overview of the bill—and Ms Lawder even more so—so I will not speak in detail to the parts of the bill that the Greens do not propose to amend. However, I would comment on a number of aspects of the bill. Firstly, I am very pleased to see that the bill updates the objects of the Litter Act 2004 to better reflect the purpose of the bill, which is “to protect and enhance the natural and built environment, amenity and wellbeing of residents of the ACT”.
Secondly, I am very pleased about the introduction of an offence that deals with construction material not being kept on a building site. I think that is an excellent idea. Any of us who have been near building sites will know that lots of plastic, styrofoam, various other bits of rubbish et cetera seem to blow off those sites. I suspect that
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