Parking in a fine mess Date: 07/03/2008 Publication: Sydney Morning Herald
SYDNEY is supposed to be a city of villages. Now we find it is a city of sectors. "Parking sectors". Which probably sounds a bit like postwar Berlin, except that in occupied Berlin the sectors were quite clear: Soviets in the east, American, French and British sectors in the west, with Checkpoint Charlie in between. You knew where you were. Not like Sydney.
The Herald has exposed the Great Sector Swindle and Sydney is rightly outraged. Motorists like to think that if they move their vehicle out of a parking spot within the specified time limit, they comply with the law. They believe this is true even if they move only as far as the next parking spot or the next street or merely drive around the block and return to the same parking spot. But that is not necessarily how councils and other authorities see it. The Office of State Revenue, which collects parking fines, says it is not enough to leave one spot for another nearby. You will still get booked because your vehicle remains within the same "overall parking sector". The problem is defining a "parking sector". Sydney solicitor Dennis Miralis, who specialises in traffic matters, is confident the term "parking sector" won't be found in any relevant statute.
Presumably councils and other authorities tell their parking rangers where these sectors begin and end, but they certainly don't bother to tell the motorists. Sydney drivers were in the dark until the Great Sector Swindle was exposed in yesterday's Herald. The Herald report concerned a fine incurred by a Fairfax Media employee at Darling Island, Pyrmont, levied on behalf of the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority.
Does the authority's action mean councils and other bodies can simply make up these areas, arbitrarily drawing boundaries to trap the unwary motorist? These "sectors" are about as real as lands of myth and legend, like Atlantis, Never-Never Land and, of course, Cloud Cuckoo Land. Perhaps the best comparison is with El Dorado, a fabled land of great wealth supposedly somewhere in Latin America. The great riches part is definitely right: in the last financial year, the City of Sydney, for example, enjoyed gross revenue of $33.4 million from fines, mostly from parking. No wonder Herald readers feel they are being ripped off; government fails to provide either good public transport or adequate parking then makes motorists pay the penalty.