Page 4156 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2019
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To complement the robust new approach to litter enforcement, this bill both supports and protects rangers enforcing the law. New provisions allow rangers to link an offence to the operator of a vehicle where the offence is committed after exiting or before entering a vehicle—that is, where someone drops a cigarette butt and refuses to give their name or address or becomes aggressive to a ranger before getting in a vehicle and driving away, the offence may then be directed to the owner of that vehicle. As a result, our rangers can now target littering and illegal dumping offences with greater confidence, knowing they have added protections when issuing infringements, which they will not be doing lightly.
This is an incredibly important bill and one I am pleased to support. It is about bringing our legislation in line with community expectations and desires, about reflecting how seriously we take the state and the safety of our city and ensuring that how we feel about the city marries with how it looks, and for good reasons. I commend the bill to the Assembly.
MR STEEL (Murrumbidgee—Minister for City Services, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Recycling and Waste Reduction, Minister for Roads and Active Travel and Minister for Transport) (4.18), in reply: Littering and illegal dumping is a problem that occurs in many forms and across all areas of our city. From the dropping of food wrappers and receipts to the dumping of trailer loads of rubbish or depositing dangerous items like syringes, these actions have important impacts on the wellbeing of our people and the environment and do not have a place in our community.
In June I introduced new and robust laws, through the Litter Legislation Amendment Bill, that are designed to address these problems and more, including dealing with abandoned vehicles, road users making roads unsafe by failing to cover a loaded vehicle appropriately, and extreme cases of hoarding. By improving the enforceability and efficiency of our legislation and introducing proportionate and escalating offence provisions, we can combat littering and illegal dumping for a safer and cleaner city. This issue goes to the heart of the wellbeing of Canberra residents and acts on a priority from the citizen-led better suburbs statement 2030.
Littering and illegal dumping is, unfortunately, an increasing problem in the ACT as our community grows and becomes more compact. Littering has a serious impact on the natural environment, as littered items often blow or wash into our parks, waterways and landscapes, creating an unsightly and unhealthy place for residents and potentially a dangerous habitat for wildlife. It also has a serious impact on society, with the littering of harmful items such as syringes or broken glass making our parks and other open areas a risk to the health of the public.
Littering and illegal dumping also has an economic cost. Cleaning litter from our streets and parks and waterways and removing dumped items cost the government over $3 million in the last financial year, with over $550,000 spent on cleaning up illegal dumping alone, a 30 per cent increase on the last financial year. This is a significant financial burden to the community and one that this bill will address to ensure that we can move towards a more efficient and proactive system for managing what has long been a problem in Canberra.
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