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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Tuesday, 3 August 2004) . . Page.. 3367 ..

of Ms Tucker’s proposed amendments. Personally I do not have a “No junk mail” sign on my letterbox. So-called junk mail as such does not worry me, but I do respect the wishes and the rights of someone who does not wish to receive this sort of advertising or promotional material. And if that someone indicates with a sign that junk mail is not welcome on their property, then that wish should be respected. In other words, it is offensive not to respect it. I also agree that the careless letting loose of quantities of balloons is environmentally unsound and should only be permitted under the conditions referred to in Ms Tucker’s proposed amendments.

We are fortunate to live in a notably beautiful city and we should work to keep it that way and even enhance it. Sadly, parts of it have been looking a little grottier over recent years, particularly because of the spreading stain of, for example, mindless graffiti. And we must do what we can to arrest and reverse that trend. Ms Tucker’s proposed amendments should be seen as a contribution to that general effort. So I support the bill as a whole and have no trouble in supporting Ms Tucker’s proposed amendments.

MR WOOD (Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Arts and Heritage, and Acting Minister for Health) (5.11), in reply: Mr Speaker, I thank members for supporting the proposed legislation. When we get down to the detail stage I will give, I think, reasonable grounds for not supporting Ms Tucker’s amendments.

Just to talk generally about that: there is a broader issue. I remember some young student somewhere in south Belconnen did a very good research project. He gathered all the junk mail that came into his letterbox over a period, brought it up to a year’s total, multiplied it by the number of letterboxes in Canberra and decided how many trees went in the process of junk mail. It was a quite remarkable exercise and it was quite notable just what a big impact it had. It was a quite interesting exercise. I forget the actual figures now, but I read it with quite a deal of interest.

I get concerned—I think I have said it before when we have discussed litter—when I buy the Sydney Morning Herald on a Saturday morning. I dispense with most of it. No doubt there are people in Canberra that look at the positions vacant or other things, but I think there is just a lot of material that is never attended to. Plus there is all the paper they use just to support advertising. I think there is a broader issue about how much material needs to be printed. But that is not what we are on about today, before Mr Speaker pulls me up.

Mr Hargreaves asked a question that I do not think I can answer. Notwithstanding, I have seen a little thing on walls around the city saying, “Bill posters will be prosecuted”. But at this stage it is not part, as I understand it, of the Litter Act. I do not know if it has got anything to do with graffiti. I just cannot answer the question: under what authority would bill posters be prosecuted? Maybe I will do some more research somewhere for you with respect to that, Mr Hargreaves.

Ms Tucker said we should be as much about litter prevention. We talk about that. I have asked the question of officers: how many complaints have we received? Since 1 January 2003, that is, a year and seven months, none. That is specific to stuff going into letterboxes, I would think, because we can well see the litter lying around.

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