Thursday, 12 September 2024

 Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (12:34): (675) My question is to the Minister for Regional Development. Minister, last week you were in Ballarat to open the extension of the multistorey car park, where an additional 400 car parking spaces came on line funded by your department’s Regional Car Parks Fund. Minister, are these parking spaces part of the 1000 car parks promised at the 2018 election for Ballarat, which was actually an election commitment taken to the 2018 election?

 Gayle TIERNEY (Western Victoria – Minister for Skills and TAFE, Minister for Regional Development) (12:35): I thank Mr McCracken for his question. He is quite correct: I was in Ballarat last week. One of the many things that I did – I was with Juliana Addison, the fantastic local member – was to announce 400 extra public free car parking places at the Ballarat Base Hospital. Of course this government is on track to deliver over 2000 car parks in Ballarat by 2026, and that includes almost 1400 free spaces in and around the Ballarat CBD by 2026. This of course will be supporting jobs growth and helping the centre to be an even better place to live, work, stay and play, and it also includes 147 completed car parks in the CBD, the 400 just opened at the Ballarat Base Hospital and another 900 through the Ballarat station redevelopment. And of course there is the council’s smarter car parking program –

Joe McCracken: On a point of order, President, I ask that the minister be relevant to the question. I asked if these 400 parking spaces were part of the commitment given to Ballarat for 1000 car parks in 2018. She is not answering whether that is a yes or a no.

Harriet Shing: Further to the point of order, President, Mr McCracken would be well served to go back to the preamble to his question, which in fact referred to the minister’s visit to Ballarat last week, and she is in fact going exactly to that detail to talk about what has been delivered.

The PRESIDENT: I did hear the minister mention a number of car parks and the number of car parks promised to be delivered in a timeframe, so I think she has been relevant to the question.

Gayle TIERNEY: Further, there are 120 car park spaces at the Ballarat GovHub, which I announced with Juliana Addison – again, the very active car parking proponent of Ballarat – and they will become available next year. That is so that locals have even more free public car parking options to go where they want to go. This is an exciting opportunity that Ballarat residents understand, and if you listened to your local 3BA radio station, you would understand this as well, Mr McCracken.

 Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (12:38): I am so glad the minister mentioned 3BA, because they reported that these car parking spaces will not be free after the start of next year. So I am asking the minister: given that the car parks will actually be under the control of the hospital, what guarantee can you give that they are going to be free after the start of next year? They are not going to be in the state government’s control, they are going to be under the hospital’s control.

 Gayle TIERNEY (Western Victoria – Minister for Skills and TAFE, Minister for Regional Development) (12:38): This is unfortunately another free 101 lesson today. The fact of the matter is that they are 400 free car parking spots over and above anything else that Grampians Health made comment on. Grampians Health made a comment about their staff and their services; the 400 places that we announced are over and above.