The push to outlaw smoking in Melbourne’s alfresco dining areas has been strengthened by ”overwhelming” support from city traders involved in a pilot smoking ban.
A survey of visitors to The Causeway lane, where a smoking ban is being trialled until March, showed strong backing for the rules to be rolled out city-wide.
A Melbourne City Council interim report gauging the mood of the smoking ban, between Little Collins Street and Bourke Street Mall, showed businesses were also in favour of change.
Cr Richard Foster said the trial could pave the way for blanket smoking bans in alfresco areas across the city.
”There are two ways that we can proceed: one is to conduct trials in other precincts, the other is to take a more systemic response and simply introduce smoke-free dining right across the CBD,” he said. ”I would certainly be very supportive of a complete ban in all alfresco dining areas.”
Cr Foster said it was time for Melbourne to ”catch up” to smoking restrictions in place in other cities. ”The trial has shown that people are overwhelmingly supportive and they’re calling on us to do more,” he said.
The council report showed almost 80 per cent of 148 people surveyed believed the smoking ban was a ”good or great” idea, with only 5 per cent against the ban. Cr Foster said 70 per cent of respondents also supported broadening smoking restrictions to alfresco dining areas at ”all or most” city restaurants.
He said traders were in favour of the ban, with 17 out of 19 Causeway businesses supporting the smoking ban, which began last October.
The owners of hole-in-the-wall cafe Local Birds said the ban had given the business a boost. Sally Twist and Narelle Ryan said their customers had previously been put off by people smoking nearby. ”We love the smoking ban. It’s so much cleaner,” Ms Twist said. ”We only have one little table of four and people have left because smoke from other cafes has wafted down. Interstate customers especially were shocked when people smoked around here.”
But Riva Cafe, at the other end of the Causeway, reported it was losing about $200 a day since the ban started. ”Business is really bad,” said manager Sunny Park. ”All our regular customers who would come on weekdays when it is quiet don’t come any more. We hope the law does not change.”
Online feedback to the trial on the council’s website has been mostly supportive, with some people commenting that the bans were long overdue.
”Victoria is well behind the other states on this issue and it is apparently going to be up to local government to implement the changes that every other state government has managed to achieve,” one person said.
Quit Victoria, Cancer Council Victoria, the Heart Foundation (Victoria) and AMA Victoria have called for statewide bans on smoking in outdoor dining and drinking areas.
Quit Victoria executive director Fiona Sharkie said she was not surprised at the results of the council study. ”Only 13 per cent of Victorian adults smoke, so Melbourne is responding to their constituents.”
Ms Sharkie said the Shire of Baw Baw was the only council in Victoria to enforce blanket smoking bans in outdoor dining areas and called on the state government to take action.
A spokeswoman for Health Minister David Davis said the government would ”continue work to denormalise smoking and that may include looking at alfresco dining areas”.
