This selfish lifestyle choice is ruining this Sydney area. Why should I pay for it?

2 months ago 17

It is one of my favourite parts of Sydney: Victoria Street in Potts Point, lined with grand terraces and huge trees which arch sleepily and provide cool shade in the middle of summer.

Dogs can turn inner-city parks into dog toilets.

In those warmer months, it should be one of our city’s most pleasant localities – the murmur of young French backpackers loitering outside hostels; a sprinkling of cafes and restaurants; glimpses of the sparkling harbour and the gleaming city in the distance.

But like so many other dense parts of Sydney, Victoria Street has an invisible problem. As temperatures increase and the humidity rises, the litres of canine urine excreted onto poor Victoria Street’s paths and gutters heats up, forming a festering vapour of acidic stench that has effectively made what should be one of our city’s most beautiful streets an open-air dog toilet.

The invisible problem was best illustrated by the entitlement of one man I witnessed earlier this year. Proudly carrying a Sydney Writers Festival tote bag in one hand, and holding the leash of his gargantuan greyhound in the other, he paused as the canine unleashed what seemed like a high-pressure hose of urine. The man, who busied himself on his phone, didn’t look back as he walked away from the puddle on the footpath.

As a society, we have become increasingly intolerant of others. Smokers have been banished from al fresco dining areas, because passive smoke may drift to non-smoking diners. Residents have successfully lobbied their local councils to restrict restaurants and nightclubs from operating late at night because the noise of people talking might affect their sleep.

In economics, these are termed externalities: consequences of an activity which affects other parties. In these domains, lawmakers and local authorities have recognised and acknowledged their effects. But when it comes to dog owners, they have so far failed to act.

Perhaps the growth in canine ownership means it is time that they should. The latest statistics show in 2023 there were 1285 dogs per square kilometre in the City of Sydney local council area and 34,000 registered dogs.

Cat owners are often maligned and attacked in the media for being irresponsible and a menace to local native wildlife.

But while dog owners allow their dogs to be an ubiquitous affront to olfactories, cat owners like myself typically spend $25 a week buying a large bag of kitty litter made from recycled paper. I do not ask others to live with the stench, and I also pay the waste fees to the council to dispose of it. This is a cost most cat owners in the city happily pay.

The local council takes a different approach, providing for free plastic bags for dog owners to pick up litter in local parks, but the largesse afforded to them goes even further.

Outside my unit building there is a small park. It should be an inner-city oasis. But as a friend recently remarked to me, it smells only of dog urine, rendering it unusable to anyone else. After months, the nitrogen from the dog urine kills the grass. Workers from the City of Sydney dutifully arrive and install new turf. The dog owners kill it with urine. The process repeats itself.

I don’t hate dogs, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask why ratepayers have to repeatedly pay for new grass in a park, which nobody other than dog owners can use.

As the statistics show, Sydney’s inner city is heaving with dogs. Perhaps it is time we looked to other countries to make the system fairer. In the Netherlands, in some built-up areas, dog owners are charged an annual dog tax. Proceeds from the tax are used to keep neighbourhoods and villages clean as well as helping provide enough places to walk your dog. And in 2026, the Italian tourist city of Bolzano will charge owners of visiting dogs 1.50 Euros, with the cash also helping with the clean up.

The city of Vienna, which also charges a dog tax, gives a tax rebate for those who take a course on how to properly behave with a dog.

I don’t want Sydney to be known as the city that always stinks. Let’s start charging a duty on dog owners, use the cash to wash away the smell, and clean up what is becoming an increasingly filthy city, once and for all.

Christopher Harris is the Herald’s education editor.

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