Page 3651 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 2010
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security services. Instead of the shuttle bus finishing at 7 o’clock in the evening, it ran until 2 o’clock in the morning or 2.30 in the morning so that, individually, nurses and staff at the hospital could be ferried back to their cars to address some of the security concerns.
Mr Hanson: Didn’t you ask about pay parking?
MS GALLAGHER: I see the challenge I threw out before lasted about one minute. The issue with pay parking—
Mr Hanson: What about pay parking, Katy?
MR SPEAKER: Mr Hanson!
Mr Hanson: Well, she wouldn’t have got to the answer, otherwise.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, you are now warned. I have asked you a number of times. You keep interjecting, even over the top of my attempts to let Ms Gallagher be heard. Ms Gallagher.
MS GALLAGHER: As to the issue with pay parking, it is not the government’s intention to introduce pay parking, but as we have seen with the new parking arrangements at Canberra Hospital, it is something that we will monitor, depending on use by non-hospital staff at the Canberra Hospital site.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Coe, on a supplementary question.
MR COE: Minister, what lessons have you learned from your failed efforts to introduce pay parking as part of the 2006-07 budget?
MS GALLAGHER: I think the idea to have pay parking at the hospital is not an unreasonable one. By far the majority of hospitals around the country have implemented pay parking. The issue with the pay parking when we introduced it was that people were unhappy about not having a system where they could pay for the amount of time they were there. There was not necessarily objection to pay parking; it was the fact that it was a flat rate and people wanted to pay for the parking time that they used.
Because of the layout of the different car parks at the hospital, that was not able to be introduced at the time. The multistorey car park does afford us the capacity to have a system like that in place. This government has not formed a view on that at all, but it is something that we will watch. For example, we opened a car park just near CIT, between CIT and the Canberra Hospital site, for the morning staff, and we learned very quickly that non-hospital staff from adjoining centres such as Woden were using that car park. Obviously if we build a multistorey car park at the Canberra Hospital and there is an issue with non-hospital visitors and non-hospital staff and people engaged in non-hospital related activity using that car park, then pay parking is something that this government will have to look at.
MR SPEAKER: A supplementary, Mr Smyth?
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