Page 1292 - Week 05 - Thursday, 31 May 2007
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it was originally anticipated, of around $800,000, when I said we were expecting $1 million to be raised. Towards the end of May that was around $1.2 million, and the shortfall in the cost of implementing pay parking and the revenue raised was a total of $618,000.
MR STEFANIAK: I have a supplementary question. Minister, why did you put thousands of Canberrans through the inconvenience of pay parking for so little result? Can you also tell us when the new $29 million multistorey parking bays will be up and running?
MS GALLAGHER: The government was clear from the beginning that the idea around pay parking was not only to raise revenue for the health system—and it would have been much-needed revenue—but also to manage some of the pressures that were being experienced at both the car parks: to remove the incentives for people to park and ride at the hospitals and also to create capacity for visitors to park close to the hospital and for staff to be kept in certain areas, particularly towards the back of the hospital for morning staff and closer to the hospital for evening staff.
Once you take away all the community feedback around visitor car parking and the dislike of pay and display, the issues around traffic management at the hospital and parking management at the hospital were much improved with pay parking. I know that you will never agree with that, but it was true. There was parking for visitors close to the hospital. You could actually get parking close to the hospital. I visit the hospital pretty frequently on official and unofficial business. I was always able to get parking at the hospital and pay for that parking. So there were some benefits from it. It removed park-and-ride people. Staff were able to access designated car parking. Doctors were able to. It created some order in the situation.
The removal of pay parking, based on community feedback, meant that we could not introduce pay-as-you-leave parking. Between 30 and 40 per cent at Canberra hospital could have become pay-as-you-leave, and around 20 to 30 per cent of Calvary could have become pay-as-you-leave if we had wanted two systems in place and implemented pay-as-you-leave at Calvary. But the fact is that at neither site could pay-as-you-leave be implemented 100 per cent. The government had taken the decision that, because of that, we would do one system of pay parking—pay-and-display. The community did not like that. We have accepted that view. We have removed pay parking. I have to say that there has been traffic chaos at Canberra Hospital for most of this week.
Mr Pratt: So you made a mistake?
MS GALLAGHER: It is because there is no regulation of the car parks now, because there is no ability to designate staff car parks as distinct from visitor car parks. But the evidence is that—
Mrs Dunne: Why?
MS GALLAGHER: Because there is no regulation at the car parks, because they are free.
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