Tuesday, 21 March 2023

Ballarat car parking

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (17:02): (111) My adjournment matter is to the Minister for Regional Development, and it concerns the promised 1000 free car parking spaces in the Ballarat CBD. The action that I seek is for a review of the program to be conducted with the review to be made public. The 1000 car parks were a commitment made at the 2018 state election. In the 2019–20 budget $30 million was set aside from the Regional Car Parks Fund to complete these works. The member for Wendouree at the time said in the Ballarat Courier, and I quote:

We are working … with the City of Ballarat to identify key precincts of parking demand and our plans are on track …

That was in March 2021. ‘On track’ – really? As reported in the Ballarat Courier later in 2021, a time line had been published on the Regional Development Victoria website which indicated construction would begin in 2020. I checked the website this morning, and the staged completion of the Ballarat car parks across various locations has a status of ‘ongoing’. Need I remind everyone that it is 2023? There are a number of different projects that are spoken about. They range from a multistorey car park at the SMB Fed Uni campus, another additional set of car parks at the Ballarat Base Hospital, a multilevel car park at Bridge Street and also on- and off-street parking at other sites. At the time the member for Wendouree also said that the final locations will not be finished until May 2022, although the plans were not set in stone. I will save everyone the bother of actually checking on site – nothing has actually been delivered. I visited street traders in the troubled Bridge Mall area along Sturt Street, and they are telling me that car parking is an issue. When will we actually finally see these 1000 car parks fully delivered, because it has been nearly five years since they were promised? Ballarat deserves much, much better than this.