Page 2637 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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tremendous facility where they can perhaps drive from the suburbs to the town centre, drop the kids off along the way, go to the shops if necessary, then get a bus to the city and have free parking back in Gungahlin, no parking worries in the city and various other places along the way, and you do not have to worry about negotiating your way through the traffic; someone else can drive for you.
In terms of timeliness, I believe that with the new timetable a lot of effort has gone into improving matching the times. Certainly the transport officers at the interchanges are working hard with the drivers to improve their performance in terms of matching the timetable. I expect to see improvements in the coming months. Improvements have already occurred, and I expect to see further improvements that I will be able to report to the Assembly in the near future about timeliness.
In the spirit of keeping to time, I will turn to some other matters that members have raised this evening, rather than covering the rest of the portfolio. Mrs Dunne asked some questions around the charity bins and the new code of practice. The implementation of the code of practice for the management of charitable recycling bins is in its final stages. TAMS met with all affected charities on 30 July to discuss the implementation of the code and the expression of interest process. All charity bins will be relocated to their new allocated sites by 1 October. That is the current plan.
A targeted compliance program has been developed. That was also explained to the charities. The compliance program will commence a few weeks prior to the relocation of the bins to reduce the prospect of illegal dumping around the bins and will continue following their removal. The compliance work will include monitoring to ensure the bins are removed by the set time frame.
This has been one of those tricky problems. The charity bins obviously are an important source of revenue for the charities and a great way of goods being reused rather than simply dumped into landfill. That said, I am well aware of the community feedback around people’s perception that it is an unsightly mess. Certainly I have seen some photos of some pretty dodgy efforts from the Canberra community in dumping things.
I actually witnessed somebody recently dumping something illegally. I was sitting in a restaurant at Cooleman Court on a Friday night with the family and out of the window I saw somebody pull up in a ute and jump out. It was under the cover of darkness; they clearly knew what they were doing was wrong because they were in a considerable hurry. Unfortunately it was too far away for me to dash out and urge them to behave more appropriately. But it is a real shame because it is a great service and it is an important source of revenue for the charities.
I do hope that the new approach works effectively. Certainly, the trial that was undertaken of concentrating the charity bins in higher profile locations seemed to work well. I think taking them out of the local shopping centres will improve the passive surveillance of the sites and it will also mean that TAMS rangers can concentrate their compliance efforts on a reduced number of locations and therefore hopefully be more effective in implementing those.
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