Page 3933 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 2010
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MR STANHOPE: This will stop it. I have absolutely no doubt. This is one of those issues where the prospect of a penalty and the inevitability of a penalty—a payment for not collecting trolleys—will, I have absolutely no doubt, have an impact.
We tried a collection system previously. TAMS did at one stage actually collect abandoned trolleys and take them to its pound. The pound utilised at the time in Belconnen was the one at Parkwood. Unfortunately, we collected hundreds of trolleys over time, thinking that the shopping centre owners or the supermarkets, having lost access to hundreds of trolleys would be very keen to retrieve them. This was, I think, in a situation without the prospect of penalty. They did not and they just built up and built up to a point where TAMS was left with hundreds of trolleys that the shopping centres refused to collect. It was not worth their while to send somebody out to Parkwood to pick them up and to take them back. They did their cost-benefit analysis. They would not. Even when we collected them in a central spot, they would still not come and pick them up. So we abandoned that.
We actually ended up filling the yard with them and they were never collected. We rang up and said, “We have got a hundred of your trolleys here.” They never did collect them. That was the response of the supermarkets to that particular effort or attempt to deal with the issue. I really am surprised. The next time I hear the Liberals whinging about the look of the city, I will remind them that they are happy to actually agitate, whinge, carry on and to put out press releases about grass not being cut or litter on the side of the road. But when it comes to one of the major items of litter and rubbish—shopping trolleys abandoned in lakes—they think it is actually not important enough to pursue.
We are pursuing it here. Look at some of the other motions we are debating today. On a really productive, positive, significant social issue, you claim there are more important issues for us to be debating or spending our time. Look at your own motions on the program for today.
Mr Hanson: Calvary hospital is not important?
MR STANHOPE: We have done it 15 times in the last two months and you are going nowhere with it. It is repetition ad nauseum.
Mr Hanson: I will keep trying; don’t you worry.
MR STANHOPE: Of course you will keep trying. You are very trying. You are trying all the time and you will, but you will get nowhere with it. But do not stand here and suggest that all the issues that you are interesting in pursuing, as puerile as they are, are more important than a practical, sensible approach to a major issue of concern to the people of Canberra.
I commend Ms Le Couteur for her energy and interest in this issue and I have been very happy to work with her to get this good outcome.
Question put:
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