Page 4510 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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Another case is obtaining a permit to move an unregistered vehicle to the ACT Motor Vehicle Registry. Let us say that someone has a vehicle that is not registered. I see a couple of people smiling, and I cannot imagine why. If you want to move that vehicle, you need a permit, which is perfectly acceptable and agreeable. You go along to the registry, pay $13 and get a permit. That permit allows you two hours to get the vehicle into the registry. That is okay. Let us say that you get the vehicle in there, it goes over the pit and they say that you need to have some mechanical repair carried out that takes longer than two hours. At that time you have to pay another $11 to enable you to have that work done, and you then receive a seven-day permit. That is revenue-raising. What should be done is that, if the person needs to go and get something done to the vehicle, that two-hour permit should be extended to a seven-day permit. He should not have to pay another $11 to get that.
Another case, that I find quite remarkable, concerns someone who received a parking ticket. He was returning to his vehicle with the coin in his hand after going into a shop, and the lady had started to write the ticket. That was perfectly understandable. He said that she was only doing her job and was quite reasonable about the situation, and she made a note of what he had said. He wrote to the Parking Operations Section of the Department of Urban Services and mentioned the particular case.
The important thing here is that it is said that if you wish to have the matter heard in court you must set out your grounds for appeal in writing prior to the cancellation date. I did not know that the court's responsibility to look at whether or not someone can bring a matter before courts had been abrogated by the Department of Urban Services.
I thought it was the right of all Australians that they can have their day in court. Whether they have grounds or not should have absolutely nothing to do with it. I find it unreasonable that a letter is sent to the person telling them that they must - and the key word is "must" - set out their grounds for appeal in writing prior to the cancellation date.
If someone wants to go to court, by all means, he should let them know. He should say, "Look, I am going to take this to court and have my say". All that is required at that time is, "Thank you, sir; that is your right"; not that he must give grounds prior to that.
Another case is, perhaps, one that might interest some people more than the others that I have mentioned. It concerns people facing the possibility, or the actuality, of having their vehicle registration, or their licence, cancelled without knowing about it.
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