Page 137 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 12 February 2020
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Motorists who break the rules at these times can make it difficult for businesses to go about their essential daily activities that support their businesses, and ultimately support their own families and support the broader community. I am always happy for legislative and operational frameworks to be reviewed to ensure that they best serve the business and the community.
Parking rules and enforcement are there to support the community. It is right that we continue to look at how rules and enforcement do that. I note that Access Canberra already exercise significant discretion when deciding to issue a parking infringement and are absolutely happy to support their policy colleagues in other portfolios in the information in any review. In this regard, I note that any policy changes in the matter that this would require are in the area of responsibility of the minister for road safety, and I have already spoken with him about that today.
Ms Le Couteur has moved an amendment to add a date for the reporting back to the Assembly on the investigation that is called for in Mr Pettersson’s motion. The government is very pleased to agree to Ms Le Couteur’s amendment. But I do want to take a moment to go to Ms Lawder’s proposed amendment and the points that she raised in her speech. I do note that timed parking is often there to support businesses. It is there to ensure that there is a turnover of customers who can access the services that businesses provide.
I am often out and about talking to local businesses about their needs, including about equitable access to parking, and parking turnover is something that has been raised with me a number of times. It helps them bring people into their businesses and it is something that we in this government want to ensure occurs. That is why it is important to consult and to check the feasibility of this proposal and its impacts on business before any immediate change.
Secondly, there are also impacts on our parking inspectors. A change like this needs to be supported by an effective communication campaign. Without being clear to the community about any change, how it will work and how it will not work, we run the risk of this measure being misinterpreted. The people might think a five-minute parking area automatically becomes a 15-minute parking area by default. It is our parking inspectors who have the job to explain this at times. They already do an incredibly tough job very well and sometimes some members of the community inappropriately take out their frustration on them. We need to ensure that we have done everything that we can to make sure that there is no confusion.
I note that in Ms Lawder’s speech sometimes she talked about people parking on a verge and just having a couple of minutes grace, again demonstrating that she has conflated two quite different issues. That is part of the reason why we need clear communication and to work through this matter clearly. Finally, I want to point out the continued Schrödinger policy positions of the opposition—that is, the ability to hold two conflicting positions simultaneously.
I get a lot of letters from the opposition about existing parking rules and asking for them to be enforced and enforced more diligently. I also get a lot of letters asking for
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