A Wagga woman has issued a warning to shoppers after she and her fiance copped a $1000 fine for breaking a Covid rule they say they didn't know existed.
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Beth Linquist, 26, and Taylor Morrison, 30, left home to do their grocery shopping at Coles on Friday, but on their way home were pulled over and fined for violating a public health order.
"We were pulled over for a breath test, then the officer saw the grocery bags and asked if we were doing the grocery shopping," Ms Linquist said. "We said we were and then he told us it was a breach of COVID health and safety laws and gave us a $1000 fine."
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Ms Linquist and Mr Morrison had broken a rule that states only one person from a household may leave to do essential shopping, but they say they had no idea it was in place.
NSW Health's website states that reasonable excuses to leave the home include essential grocery shopping, with two sub-clauses listed beneath the rule. The first is that only one person in the household can leave to obtain food, goods or services once per day.
On the Covid-19 NSW website, however, the rules for shopping state: "If travelling by a [car], do not share a car with other people you do not live with" and "only one person per household may leave their home to shop for food or other goods and services". There is no mention of how many times per day a person can shop.
Ms Linquist said the layout and discrepancy between the two webpages is making it hard to keep up with the rules.
"There is definitely a lot of confusion around the rules," she said. "I made a Facebook post about [this] yesterday and only one person out of 23 who responded knew that rule. On Saturday I counted about 20 couples together in Bunnings, unknowingly walking into fines."
The duo say they are strict about adhering to COVID rules, and both got vaccinated as soon as the jab was made available to them in July. "We take the rules pretty seriously which is why it was so frustrating - we just didn't know," Ms Linquist said. "There's no signage about it anywhere at Coles or Woolies or Bunnings. There's people at the doors who let you in with a smile, they let us in with a smile the day that we got fined."
She is calling for more clarity around exactly what is allowed.
"I just want people to know the rules. I think they need to be more black and white so there's no room for confusion for people who are trying to do the right thing, like we were," she said. "We want this virus to go away as much as the next person, but it is hard to follow rules if you don't understand them."
NSW Police were contacted for comment.
Earlier, a 22 year old man was hit with a $1000 fine in Tumut for not wearing nor being in possession of a fitted face covering.
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