Page 133 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 12 February 2020
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Another area where there is more to be done is transport for people who, for reasons of age, sickness or disability, cannot take public transport, cycle or walk. These people need good parking provision as well as better specialised parking options. One of the reasons why we have the current parking fine system is so that the disabled parking spaces are actually available for disabled parkers. It has been my experience that in instances where parking times are exceeded then fines are either not issued or waived if the person in the vehicle has a significant mobility problem.
When I read this motion, the one thing that was surprising was that it did not include a time frame in its call, or a call for the government to report back to the Assembly. Bearing that in mind, I have moved an amendment which does that. It says that the government is going to do this work—great—and report back to the Assembly on when this is going to happen. I commend my amendment and the resulting motion to the Assembly.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (11.09): I would like to thank Mr Pettersson for bringing forward this motion today. At its base it is a good motion, and we will be supporting it today, but we have some comments to make and concerns to raise. For example, we would like to do away with the unnecessary proposal for further study or consultation. I would presume that Mr Pettersson has already investigated this a little. He is not going to bring it forward for a feasibility study and have it not go forward. If we all agree, as we already have, that this is a good idea, why don’t we just get on with it and do it?
It is about time that the government did this. Having a system where infringement notices are placed on vehicles as a driver may be approaching their vehicle is poor public policy, and there can be poor occupational health and safety for those people involved. It creates unnecessary tension. Mr Pettersson alluded in his motion to parking inspectors potentially becoming targets of abuse from angry members of the public. It is not acceptable to make them targets for abuse. Unfortunately, it can happen.
This can mean, as Mr Pettersson said, that members of the public return at the time or immediately after their parking has expired and find an inspector issuing an infringement. Of course, the inspector is just doing their job. But if we can allow them to exercise that period of grace, it may remove some misunderstandings and potentially some more serious outcomes.
We believe in protecting the rights of frontline government officials. We believe in providing protections for them. We have been calling on protections for all frontline workers—nurses, doctors, ambulance officers and police—for years. We want to make government officials’ jobs safer. They are just doing their job. But they are doing their job within the framework that we set for them here in our legislation. We need to make their jobs as safe as possible.
We agree that there should be a period of grace on infringements for car parking where the parking has been paid for one hour or more. It is an easy and obvious step to protect parking inspectors and reduce unnecessary tension.
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