Park it in for acclaim

JUST because a great idea seems too hard, doesn’t mean it should be abandoned altogether.

Imagine if Thomas Edison had given up after thousands of failed attempts to invent the light bulb?

Our guts usually tell us when something is a great idea. The real trick is to have the passion, the gumption, and – more often than not – the funding, to back it in.

The Queensland State Government last week proved that solutions can be found to problems previously relegated to the too-hard basket when it agreed to fund 100,000 free and subsidised carparks at hospitals across the state. The $7.5 million funding announcement came after Ipswich mum Kathryn McGowan launched an online petition calling for free hospital parking because she couldn’t afford the daily carpark fees while visiting her sick toddler son.

Ms McGowan’s plight would be familiar to many locals who have been slugged fees, copped parking fines or been forced to trawl around Geelong streets searching for a parking spot while their loved one was being treated in hospital.

In the past 12 months alone this paper has reported on Geelong dad Mark Jones, who was fined $155 while his daughter was being operated on, because he was unable to find a suitable parking spot near University Hospital Geelong, as well as Cancer Council Victoria’s criticism of St John of God Hospital for its lack of parking for cancer patients.

The parking issues near Geelong’s CBD hospitals have long been acknowledged but deemed too difficult to fix by the state and local governments. But last week’s Queensland decision shows that there are solutions available for a government willing to put its money where its mouth is.

The Queensland press have hailed their hospital parking solution as a win for “people power”. It is perhaps more accurate to label it a win for common sense, and for a government having the fortitude to fund something everybody knows is a really good idea.