More photo-hatred

This should be great for the Australian tourism industry. Waverley Council controls Australia's most famous beach -- Bondi

A Sydney council has decreed the act of taking a photograph in a public place is a hazard to public safety. Waverley Council rangers have been given orders to move people on who have not sought its permission to take photographs in a public area because shoppers are "running the gauntlet". The Saturday Daily Telegraph was alerted to the draconian measures - normally associated with totalitarian dictatorships - while conducting a news poll and taking pictures of obliging shoppers in Spring St, Bondi Junction, on Thursday evening.

The ranger issued orders to leave the public area, outside the Eastgate shopping centre, after a security guard notified rangers of our survey - unrelated to the council or the shopping centre. Ranger Nikki Taylor said permission was required to take the photos because it was a "safety issue" to stop people in the street. Waverley Council's Bondi Junction manager Linda McDonald confirmed the measures, saying she believed her rangers had legal grounds to ask people to leave public areas if they were talking to members of the public without permission. "Anyone conducting any act [Even the Soviets did not go that far] on public space is obliged to apply for a permit," Ms McDonald said. "It's a policy of Waverley Council as caretakers of public space." "It's part of our policies and procedures, it basically came about by people saying 'we don't want to run the gauntlet'."

Ms McDonald said this policy was the same as "every other Sydney council". But councils contacted yesterday had not heard of the extreme policies and lambasted them as an attack on free speech. Manly Mayor Peter McDonald was stunned by the ranger's orders. "There's no way Manly Council would support that," he said. "I think that makes Waverley Council look a little silly." A Manly Council spokesman called the policies "extraordinary". "It's Waverley, not North Korea," he said.

Randwick Council said it would only give move-along directions to people disrupting the public if a complaint was made, but did not require anyone to make a formal request to use their public space.

Edwina Stratton, 35, Randwick, who was interviewed on Spring St for the poll, said she had not felt endangered or agitated when approached by The Saturday Daily Telegraph. "People asking for money is more of an imposition than people doing surveys," the mother of three said. "They have a lot more of them in that area and they haven't cracked down on them." The newly-elected mayor of Waverley,George Newhouse, could not be reached for comment.

Source


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