City shop manager Betty Karlis is unimpressed with plans to make Melbourne a smoke-free city. Picture: Tim Carrafa Source: News Corp Australia
MELBOURNE would be one of the world’s first cities to have a smoke-free CBD under a radical plan for a total smoking ban within three years.
Melbourne City councillor Richard Foster said most of the council supported the moves to make Melbourne one of the world’s healthiest cities.
Smoking would be illegal for pedestrians, footpath diners and even building site workers anywhere in the Hoddle grid bounded by Flinders St, Spencer St, Spring St and the Queen Victoria Market.
Smokers would have to gather in designated shelters.
City lane The Causeway is already a permanent no-smoking zone and council has approved up to six more.
HAVE YOUR SAY: SHOULD SMOKING BE BANNED IN MELBOURNE’S CDB?
Cr Foster said the final step would be an entirely smoke-free CBD, which could take effect before October 2016.
City shop manager Betty Karlis, 48, a smoker, was unimpressed.
“I think there should be sections where people can smoke,” she said.
“I think it has got to be fair for everyone, but have a bit of respect for other people who are having lunch,” the Glen Waverley woman said.
Cities around the world ban smoking in certain public areas, but it’s believed a CBD-wide ban would be a first.
Cr Foster, a former smoker, said he could see Melbourne becoming a smoke-free city in this term of council.
Motions at Melbourne City Council need the support of six of 11 councillors to pass, and Cr Foster said he was confident he had majority support.
Some councillors could not be reached.
Others expressed differing levels of support for the scheme.
Cr Jackie Watts said a citywide ban with designated smoking areas was inevitable.
“As a public safety and public health issue, one imagines it would be the direction thinking people might go,” she said.
“Most people don’t smoke and all people should not be subjected to passive smoking.”
Lord Mayor Robert Doyle said his mother died of lung cancer so he didn’t need to be recruited to the anti-smoking cause.
But he said any policy change should be incremental.
“If we can show traders and businesses, just as happened in pubs and restaurants, that this doesn’t detract from your business ... then bit by bit we will win that battle. But our aim this year is to do six (no-smoking zones),” he said.
Council set aside $340,000 to expand smoke-free areas in its latest budget. A total ban may cost a further $500,000.
Environment portfolio chairman Cr Arron Wood said a ban would be hard to enforce but he’d support smoke-free alfresco dining areas “pending all the detail stacking up”.
Green Rohan Leppert said council was heading for a city-wide alfresco smoking ban, but a state ban would be better.
Council’s sole smoker, Ken Ong, said he’d back bans only in special and justified cases, but not in popular alfresco dining precincts like Lygon St.
christopher.gillett@news.com.au
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