Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late the fire­works in­dus­try will re­quire per­sons to seek per­mits to dis­charge fire­works, ex­cept for pub­lic hol­i­days and De­cem­ber 31 - and fire­works will be re­strict­ed in cer­tain ar­eas, in­clud­ing near zoos, an­i­mal rear­ing fa­cil­i­ties and hos­pi­tals.

This is among pro­pos­als in the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences (Amend­ment) Bill 2025, which will be de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­mor­row af­ter­noon. The bill al­so seeks to make breach of this law a tick­etable of­fence

The bill re­quires a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote (Gov­ern­ment votes alone if nec­es­sary) for pas­sage.

Ac­cord­ing to its ex­plana­to­ry notes, the six-clause bill pro­vides for per­mits to be grant­ed to use fire­works. How­ev­er, cit­i­zens will not be re­quired to ob­tain a per­mit for the dis­charge of fire­works on pub­lic hol­i­days and De­cem­ber 31.

A per­son will be al­lowed to dis­charge fire­works on pub­lic hol­i­days be­tween 8 pm to 9 pm of that same day.

On De­cem­ber 31st, dis­charge will be al­lowed be­tween the hours of 11.30 pm in the evening to 12.30 am of the next day.

Re­stric­tions on use of fire­works on land is pro­posed ac­cord­ing to whether dis­charge cre­ates a dan­ger/nui­sance, and the su­per­vi­sion of chil­dren when dis­charg­ing toy fire­works.

Per­sons will not be able to dis­charge fire­works with­in half a mile ra­dius of a pub­lic/pri­vate hos­pi­tal; air­port; a zoo; reg­is­tered an­i­mal shel­ter; farm where an­i­mals are reared; for­est re­serve; or a na­tion­al park.

A valid per­mit from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice will be need­ed to dis­charge fire­works. Ap­pli­ca­tions will have to be made to the CoP.

On­ly per­sons 18 years old and over will be is­sued per­mits.

Where a per­son has ob­tained the per­mit, two weeks be­fore dis­charge date of the fire­works, they must pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion to the Fire Ser­vice on the date and time of the in­tend­ed dis­charge; type and num­ber of fire­works be­ing dis­charged; and lo­ca­tion of the dis­charge.

While a per­son may dis­charge fire­works on any land be­long­ing to them, it’s pro­posed that writ­ten per­mis­sion will be need­ed from own­er of pri­vate­ly owned land where fire­works will be dis­charged.

It’s al­so pro­posed per­sons will not be able to dis­charge fire­works in a way as might cre­ate dan­ger or con­sti­tute a nui­sance/un­safe act to any per­son or prop­er­ty. They will not be able to dis­charge fire­works in, on or on­to any house, ve­hi­cle or street.

Par­ents/guardians of a child may al­low the child to dis­charge toy fire­works on­ly when the child is un­der their di­rect su­per­vi­sion and con­trol.

Fixed penal­ty no­tices will be is­sued where an of­fence is com­mit­ted. Pay­ment time is by 14 days.

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment yes­ter­day stat­ed, “There’s a lot of con­cerns with this bill and the lack of con­sul­ta­tions with stake­hold­ers con­tin­ues be­ing a trou­bling is­sue.”