Hold on tight to your balloons in public Shellharbour residents, because if you let them go the council will be coming for you.
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In a debate at their “potentially historic” Tuesday meeting – which may be the last if the council’s legal action fails in court next week – Shellharbour councillors turned their attention to their constituents’ use of the humble balloon.
Late last year, councillors voted to exhibit changes to the council’s sustainable events policy, which would prohibit “the release and/or use” of balloons at any events on council land.
Mayor Marianne Saliba this week proposed stepping back from this ban, as she said the council had been labelled a “nanny state” by balloon fans.
She recommended changing the policy to a “halfway point” that would ban people from releasing balloons into the air, but not from “using” them in public parks.
She said if councillors were to accept the policy change recommended by staff, partygoers could be fined for having balloons tied to shelters marking out kids birthdays.
“The idea is that we still allow balloons to be used, we don’t allow them to be released and that we also continue with our policy of encouraging people to use alternatives to balloons to recognise an event,” Cr Saliba said.
But independent councillor Peter Moran – who originally suggested the policy change – urged other councillors to stop people using balloons in public, as they caused litter problems and damage to the marine environment.
“We might like to think that the only bad balloon is a helium-filled balloon that pops and lands in the ocean, but in this particular area, there’s a lot of balloons that aren’t helium that still end up in the marine environment,” he said.
“You only have to go for a walk through some of our parks on a Sunday afternoon, and you can see burst balloons littering around the place in quite large numbers.”
“This isn’t saying that people can’t use balloons to their hearts content in their own private property. It’s not even saying that people can’t release helium balloons if they want from their own private property.
“All it’s saying that we as a council believe the use of balloons – the unfettered use of balloons in public parks – leads to marine environment damage and litter clean up costs for council.”
“It’s easy for us to sit back and say well this is just the fun police, but it’s not likely to be us choking to death on a balloon.”
But this was too much for Paul Rankin, who worried the council was banning all things “fun and free”.
“I understand about the environment and that,” he said. “But to me we are the fun police. You can’t have circus animals now because it’s cruel, you can’t have balloons because they’re bad for the environment, fireworks are going to be bad because of the smoke, pollution and they scare animals.
“Honestly why are we sitting here debating balloons? This is a waste of my time.”
Liberal councillor Kellie Marsh said the debate was “bursting my bubble”, and seemed to indicate that condoms may be a better target than balloons for the councils ban.
“When I’ve been out on Clean Up Australia Day, I think I’ve picked up maybe one balloon but unfortunately had the displeasure of actually picking up condoms and I’ve actually seen more of those out in the community than what I have balloons,” she said.
She also hoped to protect balloons for the use of future generations.
“A game that you can have with a basic balloon as a child is fantastic and anything we can do to get kids away from electronic devices is a good thing. As a grandparent, I’d like my grandchildren to have the same opportunities my children did.”
Councillors voted to accept Cr Saliba’s “halfway point” motion, allowing balloons to be used but not released on public land.