Page 533 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 February 2020
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
The ACT government is also thinking about vehicles and loads of rubbish that may be littered from vehicles. Items falling from moving vehicles are extremely dangerous for other roads users. An education and awareness campaign, coupled with increased fines for not adequately securing loads, will be a significant deterrent and encourage more thought and effort to ensure that items on vehicles are secure. The ACT government is introducing a further deterrent to people who do not secure loads appropriately by making this a vehicle-related offence.
The amended laws also contain protection for vulnerable people. Safeguards have been built into provisions to prevent people who are doing the right thing from being penalised. For example, littering is now an offence on private land; however, this does not apply if the littering occurs with the consent of the occupier. The ACT government also acknowledges the complex and sensitive nature of hoarding and the underlying mental health implications. This will be taken into consideration in our laws to ensure that we are handling these matters in a sensitive and sympathetic way.
In conclusion, I am incredibly proud to live in Canberra. Waste management and cleanliness are important issues to Canberrans and for the ACT government, and we are working to ensure the amenity of our beautiful city. I am pleased to talk to this important issue about the amenity of the city. I commend the ACT government’s action to reduce littering and illegal dumping in the ACT.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (4.59): It is great that we stand here today in pretty general agreement about the importance of this issue. I would like to thank Mr Milligan for bringing forward this important topic today. I think everyone here believes that littering is terrible and we do not understand why anyone does it. It makes our beautiful city look untidy, it can be dangerous and it takes government resources to clean it up. We know that the government receives thousands and thousands of complaints each year regarding littering. I know I receive a lot of complaints about littering, and I am sure most of my colleagues do as well. That is, I imagine, partly what prompted Mr Milligan to bring this topic to us today by way of his motion.
We have spoken many times in this place about the abuse of charity bins, and that the resources of the charities are used to clean them up. It is true that one man’s rubbish is another’s treasure, and there are many ways that you can re-use and recycle goods. There are Buy Nothing groups in many suburbs. Some people, on bulky waste pickup days, leave stuff out and other people pick it up. This is good, but we need to stop actual littering in the first place.
We have spoken about this in this place a number of times. More recently, in response to questions, we talked about the fix my street app. Some changes have been made to it recently, and I do not know that they were necessarily for the best. The example that I was given was of a number of neighbours in one street where there are houses on one side of the street and a reserve on the other side of the street. It is not a park; it is a nature park. At some point last year a whole muffler and exhaust system was dumped in the reserve. It was raised with me that people did not know how to lodge this complaint on fix my street because the recent changes to fix my street made it more complex for them. They felt that when they were reporting it they would have to
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video