Today Abigail contributed to debate on the Fines Amendment (Parking Fines) Bill 2024, to speak in support for workers rights and safety.
Abigail said:
On behalf of The Greens I indicate that we will not oppose the Fines Amendment (Parking Fines) Bill 2024. It has been an interesting bill for The Greens to form a position on because, as has already been elucidated in this debate, there are two groups of interests and two different principles we are grappling to balance here. On one hand, there is the issue of procedural fairness when someone issued with a fine does not know for some time that they have been fined. If those people had gotten that piece of paper on their dashboard, they would have known that they committed a parking infringement, wondered what had gone on, taken a look and perhaps taken a photo of the sign they were parked under. They could then arm themselves to contest the fine in an informed and timely manner.
I tried to park in Newtown on a Saturday morning about three weeks ago as I was taking my eldest daughter to a birthday party. Maybe we do not have such complicated signs on the Central Coast, but I was trying to find a parking spot, and there were five or six different signs telling me when I could and could not park. Sometimes it was 1P, sometimes it was 2P, and sometimes it was a clearway. Sometimes it was one thing between certain times on a Saturday morning, but at other times it was something else and sometimes one would override the other. I found myself having to do a very complicated equation in my head to work out if I was allowed to park there and for how long. It is not always simple, and if I had received a parking ticket, I would have liked to take a photo of that sign and say, "How on earth could anybody have worked this out? I thought I was doing the right thing." I would have been armed and able to contest the fine.
However, if I received an email three weeks down the track, trying to contest that parking fine would have been really hard. I was not driving my car; I was driving my partner's car, so the email would have gone to him. We both would have wondered who was driving and what I was doing. I say that from the perspective of someone who has a full-time job and is in a position to pay the fine without penalty fines accruing against me and perhaps being sent to jail. Unfortunately, that is something that does actually happen in our society, because people cannot afford it. We are trying to balance that procedural fairness issue with the valid concerns of parking inspectors who find that they are increasingly subjected to abuse, leading to the genuine feeling that they are not safe in these situations.
There is never an excuse to be abusive to someone who is doing their job. However, people are finding, particularly in a cost-of-living crisis, that getting a fine could be the difference between feeding their children that week or paying the fine and therefore not being subject to penalty fines. Those are the decisions that some people are grappling with. I do not think that applies to everybody. There are some incredibly entitled people who are not very nice and who also like to abuse parking inspectors—it is not always people who might have any reasonable excuse for that behaviour.
However, there are increasing reports of inspectors feeling actually or potentially unsafe. The bill tries to strike the right balance. My office and I have had a lot of discussions with the United Services Union on this matter. We have had a lot of discussions with the Minister. I thank the Minister, who is always incredibly forthcoming with great briefings—timely advance briefings—for me and my office so that we can ask all the questions we need to of the Minister and the department to really understand the ins and outs of each piece of legislation.
The bill strikes the right balance between two competing interests, which is not easy. From my discussions with the Minister, I believe that there is a real willingness to see what the effect of the legislation is. If it is not workable for parking inspectors, measures might be put in place to alleviate any problems. I note that the Parliament has a regulation-making power. There are procedures for parking inspectors to say, "I didn't put that paper ticket on the car because I felt unsafe." At the moment those procedures seem quite straightforward, but I know there is concern that parking inspectors will feel that they cannot validly say that they feel unsafe in the circumstances.
The Greens understand that regulations will flesh out that process and give certainty and assurance to people who are trying go about their daily lives and work without being abused. On that basis, and with the assurance that the United Services Union will be consulted in due course about that regulation, as one would expect—and knowing that the House has the power to disallow a regulation that has not met the proper standards—The Greens are very happy to support the bill.
Read the full transcript in Hansard here.
24 October 2024