Page 526 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 February 2020
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For this reason, the penalty for not covering a load was increased to $1,500. We have also made it much easier to issue infringements where illegal dumping occurs in proximity to a vehicle. Those laws that have only been in place for just a few months will enable us to better use mobile CCTV cameras to monitor the dumping of items from a vehicle and then be able to follow up through the vehicle’s registration to either issue a warning or issue an infringement notice.
I thank Mr Milligan for again raising the issue of penalties for littering and illegal dumping. It is very clearly an area where the government has passed very significant reform, and it has been in for only a very short period. We are yet to see the absolute outcome of those reforms. However, I have some further updates to provide in relation to that and the compliance targeting team which was piloted in July and has proven its success.
To assist in the enforcement of illegal dumping, we established the compliance targeting team, consisting of six full-time staff, and these staff work cooperatively but are also additional resources to the long-established city rangers team. The compliance targeting team proactively monitors illegal dumping sites on a daily basis. Patrols act on information from the public and other field staff within TCCS to target locations and also regularly identify new locations during patrols. Various methods are used, including vehicle-based patrols, foot-based patrols, the temporary placement of movable cameras, which I have mentioned, letterbox drops, and verbal engagement with members of the community. This is about both education and also other harder forms of compliance as well.
The compliance targeting team undertakes program-targeted activities to support city rangers by actively managing noncompliance before it escalates to become a complaint or a matter requiring further investigation or action. For example, the team proactively engages with developers and builders to ensure that they contain and secure their waste building materials to prevent them being blown onto adjoining areas. And they are utilising CCTV to help deter and capture illegal dumping at known hotspots. I have seen these cameras installed near my place in Kambah, on Sulwood Drive, and I have just released footage of some of the illegal dumping that has been caught on CCTV for the media and the general public to view because it shows that this team is working proactively to address these issues.
The establishment of the team has improved the process for the assignment and resolution of incidents from the city rangers’ job queue and has allowed the city rangers to reduce the number of outstanding jobs so that they can concentrate on other city services issues. Both city rangers and rangers from the compliance targeting team are working cooperatively with compliance staff across ACT government to target a range of municipal compliance issues aimed at improving the safety and amenity of the community. They are also supported by a qualified team of investigators who take carriage of the more complex compliance matters as well.
I foreshadow that I will be moving an amendment to Mr Milligan’s motion. In it I note that the compliance targeting team has taken a total of 2,149 engagements and, of these, 782 engagements have related to illegal dumping and the unauthorised use of public unleased land; 125 infringements have been issued in relation to the use of
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