Fairfield Council Sets Precedent
Yesterday, Fairfield City Council passed a motion to ban spitting in its streets following a question raised by Councillor Ninos Khoshaba in a council meeting held about two weeks ago on the 25th of July, 2006. It will be setting precedent in New South Wales with its new ruling where offenders caught ignoring the "No Spitting" signs will face a hefty fine of $1,100. A tad Draconian, if you ask me.
During the meeting where he brought up the issue, Khoshaba described the act as not only a matter of very poor manners but “a significant public health issue” and also acknowledged that it is a “disgusting habit” which is difficult to police and enforce. However, he proceeded to press for “No Spitting” signs to be erected in the major CBD areas to rectify the problem.
During a council meeting last night, Fairfield City Council ordered a six month trial period for the stencilling of signage with appropriate wording on the tops of kerbs at various locations throughout the Fairfield city shopping centre to be endorsed in “an awareness campaign to raise focus of attention to the unsatisfactory practice of spitting in public”. It also asked for further representations to be made to the Minister for Health so that the act can be further included in the state Public Health Act with appropriate penalties.
It seems that the average council officers’ range of power in Fairfield will be elevated ten fold from the normal $110 for parking fines to $1,100 for a pool of spit.
This is not the first time Fairfield Councillors have come up with interesting propositions for their community. Late last year, Fairfield Councillor Lawrence White made a proposition that parking signs be written in both English and Mandarin because he believed that Cabramatta motorists were “among the worst drivers in the world”. He had been quoted as saying that “their driving has improved but their parking clearly has not”. White then proposed to “look at putting some Asian sort of sign…or colour coding them to try to change the driving and parking habits of people in Cabramatta”.
The Cabramatta community, of course, retaliated in anger. White then proceeded to silence community criticism when he prevented residents and ratepayers from attending a full council meeting on the 18th of October, 2005 which was in breach of s10 of the Local Government Act 1993.
This led to a NSW parliamentary debate on the racial vilification of White’s comments.
Topical issues of migrants not being able to read English blared the sirens for Today Tonight which ran a story in defence of White’s “helpful suggestion”. The show implied White was blown out of proportion with the racial vilification allegations. By who, Today Tonight? Why “Australia's largest Vietnamese community, in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta” of course.
As the show asserted, Councillor “Laurie” White: “had done his homework and found that some Asian residents could not read Australian parking signs. […] In Fairfield, 300 infringement notices were handed out last year for parking in loading zones. In Cabramatta the total was 2,441. The number of parking fines for the year in Fairfield was 3,052, but in Cabramatta it was 5,195.”
In ABC’s AM program, fellow Fairfield councillor, Thang Ngo responded:
“We understand the word ‘No stopping’, we understand the word ‘No standing’. The problem here is a lack of council services, not the stupidity of the community.”
Racist or not, it seems White just doesn’t really know who's who in his community which beckons the question of why he’s up there in the first place. For one thing, Cabramatta’s primary ethnic makeup would be Vietnamese, not Chinese, so to propose signs in Mandarin just points to his lack of understanding of the real issue. So whatever “homework” Mr White claimed he’d done – it’s obviously a sloppy effort.
For the purposes of this blog, I will be following the issues surrounding Fairfield’s spitting ban further and also monitoring any interesting developments within the media which I feel are relevant.
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