Smoking Bans at Sydney Beaches Not Being Enforced

Source from:  The Age (au)  05/12/2014

When it comes to smokers, Sydney councils are opting not to fight them on the beaches.

Not a single person has been fined since lighting up was banned from some of the city's most famous stretches of sand about a decade ago.

Since then, smokers using Bondi beach as an ashtray risked – in theory – a $200 penalty for littering.

At Manly, a beach-goer brandishing a lit cigarette would potentially be fined $110 for failing to obey a no-smoking sign.

Advertisement The same penalty has applied since 2004 at Balmoral beach – where Mosman Council largely shares Manly Council's aversion to actually issuing it.

A Mosman spokesman confirmed it had never fined someone $110 for smoking on the sand – even if it had issued infringements to some on nearby beach reserves.

"And that's when people are becoming objectionable and refuse to [comply]," he said.

The record has sparked criticism from environmental groups such as Clean Up Australia..

"There's no point in having a penalty unless you intend to do something with it," chief executive Terrie-Ann Johnson said.

"Otherwise [it is] just seen to be a joke."

It was a factor that appears to have played on the minds of some of the councillors at Woollahra Municipal Council, where a recent Greens proposal for a similar ban on its harbourside beaches was narrowly defeated.

The issue was decided on the casting vote of its Liberal mayor, Toni Zeltzer, who said a ban would be difficult and costly to enforce.

It has been almost five years, meanwhile, since neighbouring Waverley Council launched a renewed push to remind beach-goers of the $200 penalty in place at Bondi, Bronte and Tamarama since 2004.

''Butt litter continues to be a problem and we will be enforcing the ban with heavy fines this summer,'' Waverley's Liberal mayor Sally Betts said in December 2009.

When asked why no smoker has yet been fined despite her previous remarks, Cr Betts said on Friday that council changed its mind.

''We decided to use education and that seems to be working," Cr Betts said – an approach similar to that adopted at Manly.

''There's fines for all sorts of things that people don't get fined for."

But Waverely's failure to issue fines has been criticised by Justin Bonsey, of Responsible Runners, a volunteer group that claims to have collected about 100,000 cigarette butts from Bondi beach since starting a weekly clean-up 18 months ago.

''I think they'd probably prefer to keep their heads buried in the sand and hope the problem goes away,'' Mr Bonsey said. Enditem