Road Traffic (Mail Zones) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 1 June 2017.)

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (11:08): I rise to speak very briefly in opposition to this well-meaning bill, the Road Traffic (Mail Zones) Amendment Bill, introduced by the member for Adelaide. It is well meaning. The future of parking in the CBD is a matter of some interest to me. There is actually a Legislative Review Committee inquiry starting into this very issue of the provision of parking and whether it is adequate.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr ODENWALDER: It is very interesting; bear with me. That committee inquiry is focusing particularly on the suburbs. I know that in my area, particularly around the hospital, there is a constant debate about where people can park. I am sure those of us who have hospitals in our constituencies would agree that a lot of people work there and a lot of people visit on an ad hoc basis. It is almost impossible to provide enough parking without impacting on local residents, so there is an inquiry into this by the Legislative Review Committee.

Quite aside from that, driverless or autonomous vehicles will have an impact on the model of driving and parking. It could be that we will see an Uber model of independent, driverless vehicles which are all owned centrally or owned by companies rather than by householders and which are constantly on the move and thus almost never need to park. If they do need to park, they can park off site in some storage facility. This would in turn usher in an era where a lot of parking would be redundant, including a lot of parking that is currently mandated in residential developments.

Then you have the problem of retrofitting old parking arrangements in residential developments that are unsuitable at the moment for habitation and what you do about those. Parking is surprisingly interesting. In Adelaide and North Adelaide, in the Adelaide city council area, there are over 15,500 on-street car parks—10,800, I am advised, in Adelaide, and 4,200 in lovely North Adelaide.

These on-street car parks consist of unpaid time-limit spaces, paid ticket parking, loading zones, motorcycle parks, disabled parking zones, taxi zones and mail zones, of which there are only about 30 across Adelaide and North Adelaide. To my mind, there is a lot of parking in the City of Adelaide, and, as I said before, the future of that parking is very much in question in the long term. Motorists also, of course, have the other option of parking in the tens of thousands of multistorey car park spaces that are available by payment across Adelaide.

The other factor, of course, is that Australia Post is still owned by the Australian government, and I wonder whether the member for Adelaide has spoken to her federal colleagues about this plan. I also wonder whether she has consulted the relevant union. There are people who rely on Australia Post for their jobs. As I think the minister may have pointed out, Australia Post does not use these mail zones for only five minutes every day to do one drop-off. They visit them multiple times and at staggered, random times, and that park really needs to be free so that the mail can get through, as the old American saying goes.

I oppose this bill. I urge other members to oppose it, not because it is not well meaning, but because I think it is largely unnecessary. It complicates an issue that is already quite complicated, and I think that over time the problem of parking in the CBD will move on and become a much more complex argument than simply changing the mail zones. I oppose this bill.

Mr PISONI (Unley) (11:13): I congratulate the member on Adelaide on bringing this bill to the parliament because any member of parliament who represents an inner suburban seat knows what has been happening. Over the years, we have seen an increase in urban consolidation and an increase in the number of people who live beyond the inner suburbs travelling to the inner suburbs and parking in the inner suburbs. Either they use public transport—so that they only pay for two zones rather than for the full ticket to come in from the outer suburbs and also save on paying for parking in the city—or they open their boot or go to the back of their car and take out their bike and ride into town.

There is nothing wrong with that. We love to see people using public transport and riding their bikes, but the unintended consequence of this is that we are seeing parking congestion in the inner suburbs, such as in Prospect, North Adelaide and Walkerville, in my electorate in Unley, in Goodwood, Parkside and Forestville. Businesses are having fewer visits because cars are parked all day in side streets. People who live in those side streets cannot get visitors or tradesmen to visit.

We see councils forced to put up timed parking in areas that used to have parking available for residents and their visitors virtually any time of day. It is causing quite a bit of angst in the inner suburbs. There are those who do not like the idea of timed parking. They have to apply for and pay for a parking permit to allow them to stay over the four-hour period because they are residents.

It has become an issue, so Unley council is reviewing its permanent parking process. There are many people in the electorate of Unley, and the City of Unley in particular, who believe that they are being forced to pay the cost of this Labor government's urban consolidation policy and the cost of people using public transport by being charged an annual fee to park in front of their homes, which is something they have done for the last 20 years. The member for Adelaide has been very innovative, and innovation is something we need to encourage not only in this place but out in the private sector.

The member for Little Para mentioned the move to driverless vehicles, but I would suggest they are still some way off. The multiple visits to postboxes in a day that we saw even five years ago simply do not happen anymore, with it now costing $1 to post an envelope. We have seen growth in Australia Post business coming purely from parcel delivery through people making online purchases, whether they buy them from interstate, locally or businesses overseas. We are seeing an increase in the number of deliveries, but they are not generated by the use of postboxes.

As the member for Adelaide correctly pointed out in her second reading contribution on this matter, the pick-ups happen between six and seven in the evening. That is very clear if you read a postbox. It tells you that it is guaranteed to be picked up on that particular day if you get it in the postbox by 6pm. It used to be a next-day delivery, but I am not quite sure it is anymore. There is no need to go there at 11am to pick it up. It may have been, when thousands or hundreds of letters were going into that box every day, but if you talk to anybody from Australia Post or anybody who is operating an Australia Post franchise they will tell you that the use of postboxes for posting letters has dived in recent years because people are sending emails when they have something to say.

When it is an article, whether it be a new pair of jeans, a MixMaster or something like that, they are delivered. The kitchen sink can be delivered.

Mr Pengilly: Do you know what they are?

Mr PISONI: Yes, I do know what they are; I do use them occasionally.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: They have not made them for years; they do not make them anymore.

Mr PISONI: MixMasters are on the second-hand market. You have eBay and Gumtree, and a lot of those transactions of course are done by post. People do not go down to the local postbox to do that; they normally arrange for them to be picked up or, if they want to save a few dollars, they take them down to the post office or the franchise for those parcels to be delivered.

The member for Adelaide is very much in tune with her electorate, and she has noted that for businesses to be viable cars need to be able to park. I have to say that since the member for Adelaide has been representing that area it has become very vibrant. She has done a terrific job in encouraging people to rent those shops, and some terrific bakeries and coffee shops have popped up. It is very similar to what we have had in Unley for many years. I remember that when I was on Prospect council in my late 20s, together with the Hon. Russell Wortley—

The Hon. T.R. Kenyon interjecting:

Mr PISONI: —and the member for Newland might enjoy this—there was a coalition of the left and the right at one of those council meetings. We timed it for when the old conservatives who were opposed to a ban on backyard burning—one was ill and the other one was on holidays—and we got together and we got a ban on backyard burning through the Prospect council. The coalition of the left and the right with the Hon. Russell Wortley and the current member for Unley got that through the Prospect council. When I was a member back then—

Mr Griffiths: Who had the longest hair back then?

Mr PISONI: I had the longest hair back then. You might find that hard to believe, but I had the longest hair—long, curly flowing hair! I remember that when I was doorknocking for the ward of Nailsworth—

Members interjecting:

Mr PISONI: No, I was doorknocking and a guy opened the door and he looked at me and said, 'I heard there was a hippie running in the council election.' That is true—little did they know. Within a very short time of my being on that council, that left-wing dominated council described me apparently as 'the lunatic fringe' compared with the values they held on that council in those days. Do you remember those 'Keep Prospect nuclear free' signs that they used to spend ratepayers' money on? Of course, any expansion of a nuclear program was banned nationally, but they spent ratepayers' money putting up these signs everywhere for a political message. I have digressed a little, but I think the chamber has enjoyed the digression.

The point I am making is that Prospect has changed a lot in recent years. It has become much more vibrant, and it is a very pleasant place to shop and socialise. The member for Adelaide has picked up that we can gain another on-street car park. All the research will tell you that if you are passing by and you want a cup of coffee or you want to pop into a shop, if you can get an on-street car park you are more likely to stop than if you have to find a car park at the rear of the shop. We have this debate all the time in Unley when we are talking about preserving our strip shopping.

Cities like Sydney and Melbourne take strip shopping for granted, as it is virtually everywhere, but here in South Australia strip shopping is very limited. We only have a few—we have some in Norwood, Glenelg, Prospect and Unley—so it is important that the strip shopping destinations we have in South Australia succeed. The member for Adelaide has identified a simple, costless policy that will enable an extra car park to be freed up, taking into account that things have changed and that we can get a benefit from that for the community.

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (11:23): I would like to thank all the speakers on this bill so far. To reiterate, as a member of parliament it is important to be in tune with what is going on in your electorate. Whilst development issues are the number one priority in Prospect, car parking is most definitely the number one issue in North Adelaide, and probably car parking and development in the city are the things that are on my residents' minds. For many years I have thought, 'Why is it that you cannot park in front of an Australia Post postbox for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year, yet the mail pick-up is only between 6pm and 7pm, six days a week?'

Now we know that we do not even have next-day delivery, so if it was a few minutes off we could change it. If they needed from 6pm to 7.30pm to get their deliveries done, that would be no problem; it is really the idea of freeing up the car park. The people who are trying to put the mail in the mailbox are there throughout the day, but at the moment it is a no standing zone, so you cannot even stop in front the Australia Post postbox.

I am 100 per cent certain that car parking is an issue in North Adelaide. Although there are only 12 Australia Post postboxes in North Adelaide and 55 in the city, those 12 car parks make a big difference to the people who would be using them. There is a high turnover; they would be used throughout the day, as the member for Unley mentioned. If people can get a car park easily, they will quickly drop in and pick up a pie from the O'Connell Street bakery or they will pick up some flowers they see in the window for their wife on the way home, which I think should be encouraged.

From the recent surveying that Adelaide city council did, it is not only business owners but also workers and residents who have trouble with car parking. I had a business in North Adelaide on O'Connell Street and I had a business on Melbourne Street, and one of the main issues was staff having to go and move their car all the time because of parking. When we had our classes in the evening on O'Connell Street, students would be driving around for ages trying to find parks and then they would park far away, so they are walking back to their cars late at night in the dark. So even 12 car parks will help.

I did put in my original speech that North Adelaide Primary School had their first ever concert where all the family and grandparents were invited, and they had at least three phone calls from grandparents who had driven all the way from Parafield Gardens or Paralowie, a considerable distance, and they had driven around for 20 minutes to try to find a park to come to their grandchildren's concert, they could not find a park and they have driven all the way home.

Car parking is definitely an issue. I see this as one very small measure, which has no cost and is an easy way that you could open it up. I have spoken to an Australia Post franchisee owner; they do not have a problem with it. I think it is a win-win. It has no cost. It is in keeping with what the residents want. I support the bill, and I ask that members in the house think about this carefully and support it.

The house divided on second reading:

Ayes 17

Noes 20

Majority 3

Second reading thus negatived.