Related: New green bins kicking up a stink
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
An Eaglehawk woman believes council has violated her rights with the roll out of its new organic waste bin – and is appealing to two state watchdogs to back her claims.
Sherryn Taylor has lodged complaints against the City of Greater Bendigo with both the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission and the Victorian Ombudsman for discrimination against the disabled and the elderly.
Ms Taylor applied for a green bin exemption on the grounds she composts her waste and has chooks.
She was successful, but after passing the council inspection she was asked to sign a statutory declaration that she would not put any organic waste into her general wheelie bin.
Ms Taylor refused. The mother of two injured her back in a workplace accident in 2012 and is now on a disability pension.
“Some days I can’t get out of bed,” Ms Taylor said.
“I’ve got a disability, so I told them I can’t sign a stat dec saying that I’d never put anything organic in the bin...I’m doing the best I can and I’ll comply as much as I can but sometimes I won’t be able to.”
Those who make false statutory declarations are liable to the penalties of perjury – a maximum of 15 years jail time under the Victorian Crimes Act.
But Andrew Pickles, the director of the Bendigo-based law firm Robertson Hyetts, said that penalty needed to be put into context.
“The usual context for prosecution for perjury is giving false evidence – essentially lying – to a judge in a criminal trial,” Mr Pickles said.
“So it would be extremely unlikely that anyone in Bendigo is going to jail over this.”
The Victorian Local Government Association also tried to put the statutort declaration into context.
It said the practice and the use of statutory declarations was common practice, though it varied greatly from council to council.
VLGA chief executive officer Andrew Hollows said that for council to require people who wanted exemptions to sign a statutory declaration was “the simple and common-sense approach” in this case.
“Although the exact use and purpose of statutory declarations varies from council to council, there is nothing unusual about its use in this matter,” Dr Hollows said.
However for Slater and Gordon criminal lawyer Emma Aldersea, the whole issue might be a moot point.
“Good luck council trying to prosecute anyone on that one,” Ms Aldersea said.
“They’d have a difficult time proving that the person who threw organic waste in the normal bin was the person who signed the stat dec.
“People have a right to silence, so in the absence of any witnesses it’s unlikely that the word of the garbage man who observed organic waste would be sufficient evidence to prosecute given bins are generally placed on the street the night before collection and it’s not uncommon for a passerby to throw an apple core or a banana peel into someone else’s bin.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story claimed Ms Taylor’s said her workplace accident occurred in 2008. Ms Taylor actually said it occurred in 2012. The date has been amended.