Page 1857 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 2 May 2012
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say: “The car park is full. I will go around the corner. I will park a few hundred metres away. It will not make any difference.” These are people who may end up missing their doctors appointments. These are people who may end up not being able to do their shopping or have to go to another shopping centre to do it, if that is an option, which sometimes, given the driving issues, may not be an option.
I have included hospitals in my motion because, under the Building Code of Australia standards, hospital parking requirements are even less than those for shopping centres, which simply does not make sense. The non-outpatient car parking standard for hospitals is one per cent, and it is double that, two per cent, for outpatient parking. It was a particular issue, I remember, for me a few years ago when my mother was in Canberra Hospital for a month, and I had to take my disabled father there every day to visit her. It was very hard to work out what to do when I could not get a disabled car park as I had an elderly parent who had basically no short-term memory and could not walk any distance. As you can imagine, that was an almost impossible parking situation for me. Nursing homes and aged-care car parks also only require a one per cent minimum disabled parking standard.
My motion also includes other areas which the ACT government is responsible for. This would include parking in spaces like Bruce stadium, other ovals and recreational areas, community centres and so on. Given that three per cent does not seem to be enough disabled parking in group and local centres, increasing this requirement to four or five per cent across the board at places like hospitals, ovals and community centres seem logical. We are only talking about an increase of one to two car parks in many of these sites—a small cost. But this is an amazing, enormous gain if you have a disability and rely on these parking spaces for your access to facilities.
Another issue, aside from the car parking spots themselves, is ensuring that there are sufficient and appropriate drop-off and pick-up sites adjacent to buildings such as hospitals, clinics, aged-care facilities and nursing homes, schools and so on.
Another issue as well as the simple fact there are not enough spaces is the design of the space. This, unfortunately, is a more complex issue. In 2008, 8.6 per cent of disabled parking spaces in town centres and 18.9 per cent in group centres did not meet disabled parking design standards. And the estimated cost in 2008 of remediating these issues across all the town and group centres was only $165,000. The government committed to rolling out the new standards in town and group centres and has been proactive in this area. And this, of course, is something that we applaud the government for. However, unfortunately, it seems that these standards do not, in fact, meet all the requirements of the many disabled parking space users, and I have had a number of constituent emails on this subject.
ADACAS, which of course is the ACT Disability, Aged and Carer Advocacy Service, say that the main concern that affects their current client group is the new design of the parking spaces, which are not suitable for many people, particularly those with significant mobility issues. They would like to see the issue addressed.
Since the TAMS rollout of the new standard began, which was the most advanced in the country, the parking upgrades have been put on hold due to a number of
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