GOVERNMENT HOARDS CASH MEANT FOR COMMUTER CAR PARKS
The Berejiklian Government is failing to spend money upgrading car parks at train stations despite raking in tens of millions of dollars from a tax raised on parking spaces.According to Shadow Treasurer, Ryan Park, budget figures show that the Treasurer and the Transport Minister are quite happy to take the money from taxpayers but not spend it, despite thousand of commuters being forced to drive or walk long distances to the nearest train station.
This year the Government is expected to raise $106 million, rising to $113 million by 2021 from the Parking Space Levy. The tax is raised on car spaces in the CBD, North Sydney, Bondi Junction and other CBDs and is allocated for measures that “encourage the use of public transport”.
But the most recent figures available show that the Government is spending a meagre $9 million on building or upgrading commuter car parks and interchanges; at the same time it pocketed $154 million. The year before that it was $170 million.
Shadow Treasurer Ryan Park said it did not make financial sense to withhold money when so many commuter car parks are full.
Quotes attributable to Shadow Treasurer Ryan Park:
“People have to queue or they have to walk a long way to get to the train station and yet it doesn’t have to be this way.
“The community expects when a tax is raised to spend on dealing with a problem then the money will be spent, not hoarded away by a penny-pinching Treasurer.
“This is money that is meant to be spent on encouraging public transport. There is no simply no excuse for this Government not to spend it.”
To read the Parking Australia 2016 submission on the Parking Space Levy Act Review – click here