Page 1293 - Week 05 - Thursday, 31 May 2007
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Mr Pratt: Why don’t you reorganise your bloody time zone parking?
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Pratt!
MS GALLAGHER: Because you cannot do it if you are not paying for parking. You cannot say, “These are free staff car parks and these are free visitor parks; you’re a visitor and you’re staff.” You can’t do it.
Mrs Burke: Why not? Other places do it.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mrs Burke!
MS GALLAGHER: You cannot regulate a system that has no regulation to it. It is a free car park. If a staff member wants to park close to the hospital, they can—and they are. The impact of that—and I have just come from the hospital—is that people wanting to access visitor car parking and car parking close to the hospital are now in direct competition with staff for those car parks. And the anecdotal evidence is that park-and-ride people coming from Woden are back again.
You would like a system to deal with that? Again, we cannot. It is a free car park. We cannot have one person standing in each car park saying, “Are you a visitor or a staff member? If not, you are not welcome here and you are going to be fined.” It is not the system. It is going to take about a week—
Mrs Burke: What about a staff sticker?
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mrs Burke!
MS GALLAGHER: It is going to take about a week to sort through some of these issues. The exact same number of car parks is in place as there were—
Mr Pratt interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Pratt! That is the second time I have called you to order.
MS GALLAGHER: Exactly the same amount of car parking is in place today as there was last week but, because we have removed pay parking, some of the structures that supported traffic management at the hospital have been challenged again. We will continue to work through those.
There were some benefits with pay parking. We accepted that the pay-and-display was not a model that was supported. We walked away. We have accepted the community feedback. We are working through the implementation issues associated with that government decision. It is anticipated that a new car park—a five-storey car park where the current helipad is—will take between 18 months and two years to construct. Considering that it will be funded in this year’s budget, it will have a construction date of 18 months or two years post that time.
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