FIX PARKING DEBACLE

LOCAL authorities, shopping centre managements and indeed the Queensland Government have to take a hard, sensible look at parking and the nightmare workers have in finding safe and affordable spots for their cars.

An edict by Harbour Town management that seeks to ban store staff from using spaces for shoppers in the centre’s massive car park is just the tip of an iceberg of problems across the Gold Coast and the rest of the southeast.

The people it affects are among the most vulnerable in any community – teenage kids or females who, if they observe directives not to park there, run the risk of walking by themselves after work in the dark to their cars, parked possibly a kilometre or more away.

Until trams or vastly improved bus services crisscross the city, suggesting shop workers use public transport shows a poor grasp of reality out there on the streets. Services just aren’t up to providing transport that is regular, fast and efficient. Any kid trying to use a bus to travel from one end of the Gold Coast to the other at night just to go home could be in for a long battle.

Hospital workers face similar dilemmas as State Government-approved car park consortiums charge like a wounded bull, with little regard for the difficulties of nurses and others on night shift who cannot afford to pay full parking fees day after day – assuming they are allowed to use the hospital car parks – and are left to walk alone through the dark in areas where ice addicts are known to gather.

Then there is the gouging of families who must park there day after day while a loved one struggles to recover or eventually dies.

The dreadful incident near the Pindara Private Hospital last week, in which a male nurse was bashed, stabbed and robbed, indicates what can happen even just a short distance away from the safety of the workplace. Pindara has free parking, but the nurse had parked near the playing fields nearby.

Councils have to take the problems of workers into account when setting conditions for development approval, just as developers and shopping centre owners should do too. It’s all very well to estimate how many shoppers might trek to a mall on a busy day, but a realistic allowance also has to be made for retail staff.

The Government similarly has to revisit what it has allowed car park consortiums to get away with. Hospital visits are tough enough, without families – often already emotional about the condition of a patient – having to cop the insult of outrageous fees as they leave.