Page 4151 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2019
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public health and safety offences under the Litter Act. We are really not talking about a large number of offences.
The amendments that I will be tabling today will seek to reverse the considerable increase in penalties for minor litter offences and remove the new category of aggravated littering in section 9(2) and the related prescribed categories of litter.
Given that we are not talking about a large number of offences, I actually have not been able to work out why the government is even trying to increase the penalties. The current penalties are not being used. I cannot see the agenda behind this. It must be some sort of dog whistle, being tough on crime or something, because it does not seem to make sense. As I have worked out that my amendments will not be supported, I will not be moving all the amendments that I have foreshadowed.
I now turn to hoarding. As I noted earlier, I am very pleased to see that this bill seeks to respond to hoarding as a mental health issue rather than a criminal issue. Section 24ZA provides for the establishment of a hoarding code of practice which will be approved by the minister as a disallowable instrument.
I will be moving an amendment related to this—I may not move this exact one because of the order of things—that will create an advisory council to make recommendations about the development of a hoarding code of practice. I thought that an advisory council was something that was going to be supported by the government, because I have had extensive conversations about this, but I have just been informed that, in fact, that is no longer the situation and the government does not feel that this is necessary. I must admit that I am quite surprised, because one question I asked of the government in my first conversation with them was about the consultation they had on these issues. I was told they had extensive consultation with the people involved; they had talked to the Human Rights Commission.
I point out that human rights is one of the things that the government requires all its bills to go through; so I am concerned that TCCS is not really the right part of government to be dealing with hoarding issues, as I said earlier. It is a mental health issue. One of the things I had fought to do to make this legislation work better was to effectively provide TCCS with some expertise in dealing with people. TCCS spends its time dealing with roads, footpaths, trees and things like that. They all work very differently from how human beings work.
The council that I was proposing would include people with experience or expertise in managing or treating mental health conditions, people with an interest in urban land management and anyone else prescribed by regulation. And the minister would have been required to present the council’s recommendations to the Assembly within six sittings days after the minister received the recommendations. That would mean they became public.
Hoarding behaviours and the drivers behind them are complex. The framework for responding to hoarding needs to be nuanced and informed by best practice and the knowledge of people who work to support hoarders. There has to be a mental health overlay on what would otherwise just be a land management or public health response.
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