No more smoking

The lunchtime smokers of North Sydney gathered under a cloud this week after their local council became the first in Australia to vote to ban smoking in all public places within its CBD.
Using roughly the same authority that allows a council to create no-parking zones and leash-only dog parks, on Monday night North Sydney council passed a unanimous motion to ban smoking throughout public places in the entire CBD. The ban includes parks, footpaths, benches; any public place.There will be a three-month awareness campaign and people won’t be fined until a council review next March to see whether the self-regulated ban is working. The wider population, at least in North Sydney, disagrees. Before it instituted the ban, the council called for public feedback and, out of 577 submissions, 80% were in favour of the ban.