The State Government met with food van operators this week as it collects feedback on its proposal to oversee the regulation of the contentious mobile eateries, after the city council moved to curtail their influence in the CBD.

Labor backbencher Chris Picton is conducting a public consultation, which he says “hasn’t seen a strong reaction against a lot of the proposals” put forward in a Government plan to centralise food truck regulation.

“The vendors are very positive about what the Government’s looking to do, I think… they see a vision for Adelaide as a place where we can be a leader on this, where it will be part of the attraction of coming to Adelaide and the CBD in particular,” Picton told InDaily.

“(They believe) we were getting to the point of leadership on this, but have now dropped down a couple of pegs against other cities.”

Picton said vendors had flagged an interest in “some permanent home for food trucks in Adelaide”, and it was a matter of locating a site.

“If there were any private land holders out there that would be interested in letting food trucks operate – obviously for a fee – I think there’d be a large demand from operators for that to happen,” he said.

“And if there’s anything we can do from a Government perspective – obviously don’t have lots of money – but we’re open to opening up Government land if we can locate something that fits that description (or) if it’s private land we could help with some of the logistics.”

Picton said councils such as Onkaparinga “coming out strongly backing food trucks” was a “positive development”, as “we could actually see a bit of a contest between councils to try and be supportive of them”.

However, a stumbling block remains vastly differing regulatory regimes across council areas.

“The idea of whether we could establish some standards that would apply across all councils was looked at pretty positively because it’s a real barrier,” he said.

“If you start having to pay a large fee for one council, and every other council imposes a large fee, it becomes very uneconomical.”

He said the consultation was considering “whether there could be daily fees rather than an annual fee” to facilitate easy transition across council borders.

“We haven’t heard many things against it from councils, about whether we could impose some standards across council (areas) .. so that suggests the proposals are relatively sensible,” Picton assessed.

“But there’s still a couple of weeks for the consultation to run.”

Other suggestions put forward include the state subsidising start-up van registrations or providing a “tester van”, which “people could lease if they have a new up-and-coming food truck (concept) to test out some ideas and menus”.

Thus far, Picton says, the consultation has not heard from the most vocal opponents of the city food trucks, the so-called “bricks and mortar” established eateries and cafes.

“We’ve opened it up for everybody (but) I haven’t heard from them yet … I’m happy to hear from them anytime,” he said.

“I welcome their input – they’ve got a clear position… if they were to make a contribution that would be very helpful to the process.”

He said van operators were not “making some outrageously large amount of money”.

“Most of the people are just getting by,” he said.

“(But) you can actually start up a business for a relatively small amount of money and have more entrepreneurship, more people entering the market, more activity and more tourism to Adelaide.

“Most people see this as an area where it’s not going to replace every restaurant and café … I think what we’re trying to achieve here is the right balance, as always.”