Ivan Dean, Speeches Index

Wednesday 20 May 2009

LITTER AMENDMENT BILL 2009

Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Madam President, I will make a short contribution to this bill. I support the bill. It was interesting that when this bill was first debated there was quite a lot of discussion around a lot of issues involving motor vehicles, the drivers of vehicles and also the posting of bills and what made up all of the litter that we are currently being confronted with. We were told at the time that this bill covered it all and that we were right, moving forward. We, ourselves, made inquiries to that effect as well and we were fairly comfortable with that but then we found out later that there are some areas that need straightening up in this bill.

I just wonder, having said that, whether or not we should have gone further with this bill in all of the circumstances. If you look at what makes up the biggest part of our litter out there today it is cigarette butts. Very recently the figures were that cigarettes butts made up almost 50 per cent of all litter, so I wonder whether we have made it strong enough. I wonder whether we have the penalties right for a start because the penalty for discarding a cigarette butt is one penalty unit, I think, which is $120. If you have been to Singapore recently you would be hard pressed to find a cigarette butt. One of the reasons for that, Madam President, is that they are serious about littering in that country. They are serious about a lot of other things as well; drugs and other things, but certainly serious about littering. The penalty currently for littering in Singapore, for throwing your cigarette butt out, is $500, and the Singapore dollar is almost the equivalent of the Australian dollar at this present time so it is a significant fine in that country to throw out a cigarette butt or to drop one on the footpath. For second offenders they even go further; as well as that fine you then must complete community work and in completing that community work you must wear a jacket that identifies you as a litterer and it is a very highly fluorescent type jacket.

Mr Parkinson - It's unlawful to spit on the footpath there too.

Mr DEAN - You are right; you cannot do that. That is an offence as well and that, I think, is a $500 fine as well. There are large penalties for what we would consider minor offences.

Mr Parkinson - I am not sure what happens if you spit and it lands on somebody's shoe.

Members laughing.

Mr DEAN - You are right. My view, Madam President, is that here we ought to differentiate between a discarded cigarette butt that has been stubbed out and a lighted cigarette butt that has been thrown out of a car window or out of a vehicle. In some States, and certainly in some countries, that applies. If you throw out a lighted cigarette butt then the penalty is much more severe. In this State during the tinder-dry summer periods that we confront, the high fire-danger periods, a lighted cigarette butt thrown out of a car window becomes a lethal weapon. They have been connected with many bushfires that we had around the country so I believe we should do that; we should distinguish between a butt that has been stubbed out and a lighted cigarette butt that is thrown out. I think we have an opportunity here to do that.

The other thing I think we have the opportunity to do here, Madam President, is to look at refunds on drink containers. I think there is an article in today's newspaper so it is very topical. I think there might have been something in yesterday's paper about it where a number of areas are currently looking at having a refund on drink containers around the country. South Australia, I think, is the only State currently doing it but other areas are now considering it.

Mr Hall - Through you, Madam President - that was a recommendation from the ERD committee when we looked at waste management.

Mr DEAN - Right.

Mr Hall - That is going back a couple of years ago now and the Government was looking at the cost implications of that and how that may or may not affect the recycling industry.

Sitting suspended from 4 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.

Mr DEAN - At the suspension I had raised the issue of drink container refunds and I, like a lot of other people in this State, think -

Mr Parkinson - It's nothing to do with the bill but keep talking.

Mr DEAN - It is about littering and in the second reading speech there is comment about litter spoiling the visual amenity of our urban areas, et cetera. I taking it up from that, Leader, so I believe it is.

Mr Parkinson - No, it's not, but I'm not going to stop you because I'm not approving it.

Mr DEAN - I am going on from comment made in that second reading speech.

The other issue I was going to raise - and I will talk a little more about this in the Committee stage - is the owners of vehicles from which litter is thrown. There is a tidying up of it here in this bill but I do not think it goes far enough, Madam President, and in the Committee stage I will be making further comment in relation to that part of it.

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