Local Nuisance and Litter Control (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill

Thursday 16 May 2024

Ms CLANCY (Elder) (16:51): I rise today to support the Local Nuisance and Litter Control (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2024, which seeks to amend the Local Nuisance and Litter Control Act 2016 and the Liquor Licensing Act 1997. As you can tell, I am pretty excited. It is a very, very good piece of legislation.

Introduced by the previous state Labor government, the Local Nuisance and Litter Control Act modernised our nuisance and litter laws, supporting local government to address matters of nuisance and litter. Eight years on, the bill before us today seeks to introduce further reform to ensure these laws continue to best serve our communities.

One of the most popular reforms proposed contained herein is the inclusion of light as an agent of local nuisance. Like many in this place, my electorate is experiencing high levels of development and growth in both the residential housing and commercial business sectors, with large family blocks frequently being subdivided into two, three, or sometimes even four new residences. This is obviously great news for those looking to move into our community, and while we know that more housing supply will make housing more accessible for more South Australians, we must also ensure that growth and development supports our established communities.

Ideally, new development would provide a mix of single family homes, townhouses and units for our increasingly diverse communities. Young families, those who wish to age in place, and those who rent all form the social mix we think about when considering how our suburbs will change to accommodate our ever-increasing community needs.

Along with residential development, my electorate is also seeing an increase in commercial investment, and new childcare centres have begun popping up throughout our suburbs. These new developments are partly due to changes within the South Australian planning code and partly due to an increasing willingness by local councils to approve planning applications for childcare centres within residential areas. These new childcare centre developments of course need lighting, and developers rarely consider how lighting placement will impact nearby neighbours.

Last year, I was contacted by local residents whose lives had been interrupted by the placement of a high-wattage security light attached to the facade of a childcare centre in my electorate. The lights switched on at the slightest movement, 24 hours a day, and shone directly into their homes, both across the street and directly next door. One of those neighbours was a midwife, among other shift workers, who deserved and needed a good sleep in between shifts.

To be clear, this is not an ordinary light; this is the kind of light that streams through the tiny gaps surrounding blockout shutters and momentarily blinds drivers backing out of their driveways. Businesses and centres can have security that does not reduce the ability of neighbours to enjoy their own premises and safely exit their driveways in vehicles.

When I contacted the local council to see what could be done, I was informed that light nuisance is not an offence and the best they could do was ask the childcare centre to redirect it away from adjoining properties. So I contacted the childcare centre. When I contacted them, I was frustratingly advised that the lighting system was controlled by head office in Brisbane and that all staff could do was continue to make requests that the light be redirected. This back and forth went on for months and months.

Lighting can and does become a problem amongst residential neighbours as well. I have been contacted many times regarding the positioning of a neighbour's security cameras, an issue for SA Police in most instances, when people feel their privacy is violated by the direction of video recording equipment. This can be a particularly emotive issue for parents with young children, who rightly worry about the privacy of their families.

I have also witnessed security camera set-ups that include motion sensor lighting, lighting that is bright enough that people cannot leave their windows open at night or sleep due to the glare. I have spoken to residents who cannot reverse safely out of their own driveways due to a neighbour's motion sensor lighting system. I have spoken to a woman who has the entire side of her house lit up 24 hours a day due to her neighbour's high-wattage security lighting system.

As we live and work in closer proximity to one another, and as we see more and more commercial enterprises entering our suburbs, councils need to have options open to them to define and issue abatement notices for light nuisance. Up until now, all councils and SA Police have been able to do in these extreme instances of light nuisance is ask politely that the offending light be redirected. I, and so many in my community, are happy these reforms will change that.

Our government, in cooperation with the Environment Protection Authority, has spent a considerable amount of time identifying how our Local Nuisance and Litter Control Act can be improved to provide better outcomes for our community. A total of 47 submissions were received on the proposed amendments. I would particularly like to thank the City of Mitcham, that represents a large proportion of my electorate, for putting in one of those submissions.

I do not think that council staff will mind me sharing their forthcomingness with me in their desire to have light, in particular, included in the list of local nuisances, over which local government has jurisdiction to investigate and enforce. As a result of feedback received by both local governments and members of the public, light is proposed to be introduced as an agent of local nuisance. The intent of this amendment is to allow local government to deal with issues of light nuisance that may be reasonably avoided.

The Local Nuisance and Litter Control Act defines light as causing a nuisance where the light travels from one place to another and an authorised officer determines that the nature, colour, location, direction or extent of light is such as to constitute an unreasonable interference with the enjoyment of neighbouring premises by persons occupying those premises. Councils are already expending their resources in administration and investigation costs. This inclusion will allow council staff to issue a nuisance abatement notice and expiation fee for light nuisance, which will go some way to cover their own costs and act as a future deterrent.

The amendment of section 18 of the act amends the term 'natural person' to 'individual' and provides consistency with the Legislation Interpretation Act 2021 and amends the expiation fee to $1,000 in the case of a body corporate and $500 in the case of an individual. This reflects reforms across legislation to have higher expiations for bodies corporate in order to provide a greater level of deterrence from offending and to reduce the prevalence of the practice of bodies corporate just absorbing expiations into the cost of doing business.

A commercial childcare company based interstate, with minimal motivation to work productively with neighbouring residents on light nuisance issues, may indeed find a way to make sure their lighting is compliant when the expiation fees from council arrive in their inbox.

Additionally, it is proposed that the insertion of new section 30A will allow councils to register a nuisance abatement notice to land rather than the property owner. Councils have identified that the change of ownership of a property with a problematic light fixture or other nuisance device within an abatement notice is not able to be transferred to the new owner of the property and therefore a new regulatory process would need to be undertaken. This amendment ensures nuisance abatement notices that apply to controls regarding local nuisance caused by fixed equipment, such as light towers, are applied to new owners of the property, given the source of the nuisance transcends ownership. The registration of these notices will also ensure that the controls in place are made transparent through the land transaction process.

In a practical sense this means, for example, that when a residential or commercial property owner is issued with a nuisance abatement notice for excessive light it is not just the individual that must comply with the notice. Rather, the notice is attached to the land, and compliance is the responsibility of whoever is the owner at that particular time. My constituents currently living adjacent to and opposite the childcare centre I spoke of earlier will not have to worry about going through the nuisance abatement notice process repeatedly with council if and when the childcare business changes hands in the future.

The inclusion of light as an agent of local nuisance may sound like an esoteric addition to the Local Nuisance and Litter Control Act, but from experience in my electorate I know that it will make a positive difference in our community by clearly defining what is acceptable when it comes to residential and commercial spaces. This amendment will give residents and councils a clear pathway forward to navigate what is becoming a more common problem across our suburbs.

The bill before us today also seeks to address the considerable issue of the dumping of shopping trolleys, which my community, particularly surrounding Castle Plaza shopping centre, is not immune to. These reforms include a new clause which sets out the obligation for identification of trolleys, a necessary step to ensure that members of the public and councils can identify and therefore contact the business that has supplied the trolley for their customers' usage. I would say that most large retailers already do this, and I do not see the new obligation as necessarily onerous for smaller businesses: a small weatherproof sticker is all that is required.

More importantly, however, is the new clause that sets out the requirement for timely collection of abandoned trolleys. You may be surprised to hear that my office was recently contacted about a collection of 19 abandoned Aldi trolleys behind Southern Sleep on South Road. The person who called my office had contacted both the Clovelly Park Aldi and Marion council; however, over the previous few months nothing had been done to remove the pile.

When my office called Southern Sleep on Monday to check if the trolleys had been collected yet, we learned from staff that there are now 20 trolleys dumped behind the shop. As yet, Aldi has not responded to my email requesting the removal of the trolleys. I sincerely believe that subsections (1) and (2) of 24B will go a long way to improve the time taken by retailers to collect their dumped property.

The collection of trolleys not causing a hazard within three business days is entirely reasonable, especially for large retailers who already have strategies in place to manage large numbers of trolleys on their premises. With regard to Clovelly Park Aldi, I hope they can manage to collect the 20 abandoned trolleys from behind the Southern Sleep business prior to the amendment taking effect, or they will risk a maximum expiation fee of $5,000.

I know that many in my community will be excited by the changes in this bill to the Local Nuisance and Litter Control Act, and I am genuinely really excited to commend this to the house.