Glass bans and crowd restrictions on the table after Bronte Christmas party pigsty
Waverley’s new mayor is considering crowd restrictions and glass bans to control future Christmas Day celebrations at Bronte Beach.
NSW
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Crowd restrictions and glass bans could be introduced to control Christmas Day revellers after a popular Sydney beach was left covered in rubbish on Wednesday evening.
Bronte Beach, in Sydney’s east, was littered with rubbish and broken glass after nearly 15,000 revellers, many of them tourists and backpackers, descended on the beach for a Christmas Day party.
Similar scenes in previous years resulted in Waverley Council providing hundreds of additional bins and a garbage truck permanently stationed at the site this Christmas.
Yet there was no improvement on the amount of rubbish left behind.
New Waverley mayor Willam Nemesh said he would look to implement major changes in the coming year to how the Christmas Day party is handled.
Mr Nemesh told The Daily Telegraph that measures to reduce the number of people coming to the beach for the party would be on the table. This would include re-examining the feasibility of introducing a ticket system.
Mr Nemesh also said a ban on glass at Bronte beach was “definitely feasible and absolutely on the table for consideration” after shattered glass was left scattered across the beach on Wednesday.
“There will definitely need to be changes made, because fundamentally, the lack of respect shown to our parks and our residents and community was quite appalling just by the sheer amount of rubbish that was left behind, and that isn’t acceptable,” he said.
“So moving forward, there will be changes in terms of how we manage those events, to get more of a balance right between our community and those that want to visit our stunning coastline.”
Mr Nemesh called on the Minns government to step up and contribute more to helping clean-up and police the event. Waverley Council currently pay NSW Police under a user-pays system to police the event.
The mayor believes the NSW government should step in and pay for it to avoid ratepayers shouldering the cost.
“The state government needs to get more involved instead of cost shifting a lot of these hidden costs to council for us to manage – they need to come to the party,” he said.
“We shouldn’t have to bear the expenses for crowd control in the way that we have been.”
The Minns government, however, have indicated they have no intention of taking on any of the cost of the Christmas Day party.
“This is a matter for Waverley Council. Every council in NSW manages the maintenance of its beaches including events and Waverley Council is no different,” a NSW government spokesperson said.
“Waverley council collects significant revenue from beaches in its local area including millions each year in parking revenue.”
Coogee Labor MP Marjorie O’Neill said while revellers needed to have places to celebrate that were free and accessible the local community were upset by the amount of mess.
“The community is rightly upset with all of this because people have come in and it’s not generally locals coming down there – so there are concerns about the amount of money ratepayers are spending on this,” she said.
“There were huge numbers of bins that were put out but still it’s really sad to see that people don’t respect the park or the beach.”
Former Waverley mayor Paula Masselos had long called for the NSW government to pay for more of the costs of the Christmas Day party.
The council had previously investigated making the party a ticketed event to better control crowds, yet the idea had been abandoned, in part to community concerns about restricting access for locals.
“It is such a big park and there are so many entry points – it would be very hard and expensive to monitor,” she said.
Bronte Surf Club worker Brooke Hannam was still out cleaning at 10am on Thursday with her children Archie, Patrick, Chloe.
The Clovelly locals were upset to see the state the beach had been left in.
“They’re public spaces and people should be allowed to come and enjoy them,” she said.
“It’s just a shame people don’t clean up after themselves. If you’re going to come and enjoy the beach, enjoy it, but be respectful,” Ms Hannam said.
“Our lifesavers … they give up their time to look after people in the water who don’t necessarily know how to swim. And when you throw alcohol into that mix as well, it becomes a really dangerous place.”
Randwick local Nicole Toigo said she didn’t believe changes to the event in the form of a glass ban or crowd restrictions would change the behaviour of partygoers, but said more security to control the crowd was necessary.
“I feel like people would probably bring stuff [drinks in other containers] anyway and then I feel like it would just then be people breaking the rules,” Ms Toigo said.
“The only thing that I would say is having security around to make sure that it’s more
controlled but in terms of tickets and things like that, I think I don’t think it would be necessary.”
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Originally published as Glass bans and crowd restrictions on the table after Bronte Christmas party pigsty
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