Page 4150 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2019
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talked about rehabilitative youth justice. Clearly many people often do not make rational decisions about their behaviour. Sometimes we do things like driving below the speed limit, though I suspect everyone in this chamber has sped at some time in the past, or not to breach water restrictions. We do not breach the water restrictions primarily, I would say, not because of enforcement but because of the educative approach which makes it obvious to us when water restrictions are on that we really need to do this for the good of our community.
As well as basic decency, though, of course people’s behaviour is clearly influenced by the law of the land. But laws by themselves will not always work. In fact, they seldom work. Penalties and the likelihood of being caught also influence behaviour. It really does not matter what the penalty is if the chance of being caught is approximately zero.
It is for these two reasons that the new provisions relating to dumping will be likely to be effective in reducing this behaviour. People avoiding tip fees may think twice if they think they are actually going to get caught. Indeed, there is evidence that the recent increase in compliance officers within TCCS is already having an impact at least on the number of people being caught.
For basic littering offences, however, it is not clear to me what such high fines might be effective in doing. I have seen and heard no evidence that increasing these fines will change littering behaviour, and I have asked this question repeatedly of the government.
What I have heard, however, is concerns from welfare groups and advocates that these laws are most likely to affect people who are experiencing homelessness. By definition, the people who are experiencing homelessness are living their life to quite an extent in public, the public arena, and their chances of being involved in littering are just so much higher than for the rest of us. Also, of course, people with mental health conditions or who are addicted to alcohol or other drugs are likely to be affected, in other words, vulnerable people, many of whom spend a lot of time in the public realm.
To be clear, I am not for a moment condoning littering, and the Greens are not condoning littering. I just think it is important to be clear about who these fines and offences are most likely to impact and the sorts of impact they are going to have. Research conducted by the Law and Justice Foundation of New South Wales illustrates what appears to be obvious: people who are homeless or mentally ill are more likely to be fined for strict liability offences. They are also more likely to have debts arising from these fines which further compounds their disadvantage.
Fortunately, it is very unlikely that the increase in fines and the new aggravated littering offence will impact many people. Data provided to me following a question on notice to Minister Steel’s office shows that in each of the past three years there have been a sum total of one, four and three warnings given for littering offences by TCCS’s city rangers, and no infringements were issued in this time. In the same period ACT Police issued one infringement for environment pollution and 12 for
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