According to NSW Health, recreation includes outdoor leisure activities such as sitting for relaxation, or to eat, drink or read outdoors.
But Redfern Legal Centre solicitor Sam Lee said a number of clients had contacted the service “after doing just that”, including being fined for sitting on a park bench. “Some have gone to the park to exercise and stopped while they’re exercising and just sit down and were fined $1000 on the spot,” Ms Lee said.
NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Pauline Wright said Mr Fuller’s assurance to police that he wouldn’t hold them to account for wrongly issuing COVID-19 fines was a “tacit acknowledgement that the rules are difficult to understand.”
“If the police can’t be expected to fully understand them, and it’s their job, how are ordinary people expected to understand and comply as well?” Ms Wright said.
Read the full article: ‘What do you think you’re doing?’: Sydneysiders stung for eating outside (Sydney Morning Herald, August 25, 2021)
See also Brisbane Times
