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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-09-14 Daily Xml
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HOSPITAL PARKING

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (17:07): I move:

That this council:

1. Recognises the public rallies and thousands of petition signatures tabled and otherwise shown to the parliament concerning the Rann government's decision to impose paid parking in public hospital car parks from 15 August 2011; and

2. Calls upon the government to remove parking meters and rescind the policy immediately.

The decision was made in the 2009-10 budget, but the impact was felt in August, during the winter break, as meters were installed in public hospitals. Surely, this must tell the government that this was a bad decision. In fact, I put on the public record that, if the Premier, the Hon. Mike Rann, does not see the wisdom of pulling this silly decision, I call on the premier-in-waiting, the Hon. Jay Weatherill, as one of his first initiatives, to come out and say to the public, 'This was a wrong decision. We cannot hit the most vulnerable.'

People do not go to hospital for the sake of going to hospital. They go there for three reasons: first, they are sick and need treatment; secondly, they have a loved one or a friend in the hospital and they want to visit them; or, thirdly, they are a volunteer.

To hit the most vulnerable people to the tune of ripping $11 million—and that is the budget estimate—to park in car parks is a disgrace. I feel confident that, if Jay Weatherill is to make some difference and a turnaround in the polls, soon after 20 October he could turn around and say that this was not a good decision. Whilst I understand that the Hon. John Hill is digging in his heels and saying that he is not budging on this, as tight as the budget may be I call upon the Hon. Jay Weatherill to rescind this government decision.

Clearly, the Hon. Jay Weatherill will have to steer a different course if the government is to regain a consistent turnaround in the polls, after the holiday period, and this is one easy no-brainer for the new premier to knock out. With the amount of headroom and slippage that you get in a budget of about $15 billion, why you would inflict this upon the South Australian community for $11 million I do not understand.

I want to congratulate particularly a gentleman whom I have come to admire and respect, who has actually got out there and campaigned for this, and that is Mr David Lawrence. Mr Lawrence has seen the wrong in this. He is not a political activist. He has probably never been involved before in any political campaign or rally in his life, but through unfortunate circumstances he is in a situation where he needs to access medical treatment himself. He has talked to a lot of other patients, and these people do not have the money to spend on parking their cars, for goodness' sake, in a public hospital car park.

Other people I want to bring into this are nurses and other staff who work in hospitals. They are all going to be hit with this as well. On several occasions I have been with colleagues, and with the Hon. Mark Parnell only last Friday, and hospital staff pointed out that, under this government decision, even when they are on holidays, would you believe, they will pay for car parking. Nurses, doctors and other hospital staff on leave will have money taken out of their salary to pay for car parking even though they will not be using it. Where is the justice in this decision? I am sure that, if the backbench and the caucus of Labor had some input, this would never have got off the discussion table.

I seek procedural guidance from you, sir, because we have two lots of petitions. We have some that are in the standard form for presentation to parliament, and I seek leave to table the thousands of petitions that I have here that are in the legal format on the top side, but, because they were printed through the Messenger, I am advised there is a technical issue. With good intent, the South Australian community signed these documents expecting that their signatures would be received by this parliament.

I wish to advise my colleagues that there are 2,137 of these alone, notwithstanding what my colleagues will see with the other petitions that are in the standard form. Just before I seek your wise ruling on this, sir, I want to say that, if you do rule this out, I place on record, so all my colleagues and the public know through Hansard, that there are 2,137 of these signed.

Before I pause for a moment for your guidance and direction, given that the media are showing more interest in running petitions on certain matters in print and electronic form, and also given the fact that we now have email, if such formats are not acceptable at least to be tabled, I think at some stage we have to come up to speed with the modern technology that we live with and change some of these basic processes. I know Labor members are locked into a difficult spot until they get a direction from their cabinet, but certainly members of the Liberal Party, all the crossbench members and the minor parties have indicated that we do not agree with this decision.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins): The Hon. Mr Brokenshire has asked for leave. I will ask whether leave is granted in a moment, but I should explain that, because the number of petitions you have talked about are not in the prescribed manner, you can seek leave for them to be tabled and that will happen. However, they will not be referred to by the Clerk in the normal sense, so you may wish to again state the number of petitions yourself. It will not happen in the normal sense that we do before question time, if you understand that scenario. There are other petitions out in the community at the moment that are in a similar situation to yours that do not fit the right wording or have been done on the web. So, based on the fact (as the clerks have advised me) that they will not be referred to by the Clerk in the normal sense, is leave granted for them to be tabled under those circumstances?

The Hon. J.M. GAZZOLA: By tabling, what is actually going to be done with them?

The ACTING PRESIDENT: They will become part of the documents of the Legislative Council but, other than the Hon. Mr Brokenshire referring to them, they will not be referred to in any other sense. Further to that, they will be classified under documents tabled, but not petitions.

The Hon. J.M. GAZZOLA: They are not going to be included in the Hansard?

The ACTING PRESIDENT: No, certainly not. I will ask again: is leave granted? Leave is granted on that basis.

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE: I thank the Clerk for her guidance again, I thank you Mr Acting President, and I thank my colleagues for granting that leave. It is 2,137 petitions. As I said, over and above that, in the valid format of the requirements of the Legislative Council, there are a lot more that have also been tabled and that will be put into the Hansard.

I have heard comments from some people that whilst the Rann government had a very strong moral compass early on it has drifted from that and lost touch with the rank and file of the community. I think it is fair to say that this is a classic example of that, and it was interesting that at the rallies we attended there were not people who had any particularly strong argument on political parties. They came from all voting patterns, but there were a lot there from the Labor Party who said that they just could not believe that a Labor government would be charging.

I also want to put something else on the public record, and hopefully the Hon. John Hill will look at this. I am not sure whether or not he will run at the next election; he has not made a commitment about whether he is going to but, as I pointed out at the public meeting, the Hon. John Hill has done a lot of good things as a minister and as a local member over the years, and he is astute. On the other side of the equation, the Hon. John Hill has also had the benefit of support from the southern area of Kaurna to allow him to have these privileges, and in their time of need I do not think it is in the best interests of the Labor Party or the Hon. John Hill—and I know that it is certainly not in the interests of people who have to pay these fees—that he is simply stonewalling. I would like to think that the Hon. John Hill would go back to cabinet, go back to David Swan, the CEO of health, and say, 'Mate, this one's no good. I've realised that there's a mistake here. You can't charge people for public car parking.'

I also put this to the Hon. John Hill: how can the government have planning legislation that states that if you build a facility you have to provide adequate car parking for the people who attend the shopping centre, factory, industrial site or bulky goods site? At law, you also have to provide adequate car parking for the workers. The unions would be outraged if suddenly the government turned around, changed the laws and said that when the workers come to work they will have to pay for their car parks.

This could be the thin end of the wedge if this precedent gets up. What will we do with schools? Will we charge mums and dads when they visit the school? Will we charge the schoolteachers for parking in the school car park? Where does it stop once you get this through? This is very bad legislation and, from a government that talks about social inclusion, that is a rubbish statement now because this is social exclusion.

We have seen the government bring in draconian WorkCover changes in 2008; we have seen it cutting long service leave entitlements to Public Service workers; we have seen it planning to bulldoze the Parks Community Centre and precinct for developers, while the bikie fortress across the road looked on and laughed untouched. We see the government now selling off major income-earning state assets in the form of SA Lotteries and ForestrySA. Hopefully, there will be a reversal on those two, as well.

In concluding my remarks on this motion, it is interesting and ironic that here we have a government selling off the South Australian Lotteries Commission which returns tens of millions of dollars a year to taxpayers and which was set up specifically to help fund hospitals ($20 million a year net return) but it is going to sell that off for short-term gain—and not a lot of gain when we look at the size of the global debt of the state now. That is $20 million that the government is not going to get but it is going to hit the most vulnerable for $11 million to try to recoup some of that $20 million. Bad business; social exclusion.

This is an attack on the frail and the elderly by forcing them to pay for public car parking at hospitals. Is it too late to reverse the decision? My answer is no. The government reversed its position on the relocation of Yalata Prison to Murray Bridge and paid compensation for that decision to those who had tendered for the project. The government has to accept the cost and consequence of bad decisions.

I thank my colleagues who have been supporting Mr David Lawrence and others at the rallies. I thank my colleagues who have, in a multipartisan way, been out there when they have clearly seen that a decision is wrong and have worked cooperatively side by side—that is what this council is about; that is what the crossbenchers are about. I hope the government, and particularly my colleagues in the government who are listening now, will go into the next caucus meeting and say, 'Look, this is absolutely wrong. Rule it out and stop it.' Let us get some common sense and fairness back into this madness decision that we see, where the most vulnerable and frail are being hit for $11 million a year.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. G.A. Kandelaars.

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