North Sydney councillor says it's time to get rid of opportunistic ticketless parking fines 04:07

Well, I'm pleased to say that Councillor Gilly Gibson joins me on the line. She's a former mayor of North Sydney and she's now saying that, you know what, we made a mistake and North Sydney Council should scrap the system. Councillor, thanks for your time. Good afternoon, Chris, and a good afternoon to all your listeners. So you were a fan of the system at first. Why did you change your mind?

Look, it seemed a good idea at the time. You were protecting rangers from abusive behaviour and we were sold this system and it did seem like a good idea. But now all I get are complaints and I would have to agree with you. It's opportunistic, I think, for rangers to be driving around just snapping rangers

taking fines without even getting out of their car because look Chris as we know mail deliveries don't occur daily anymore so you could have done something wrong and you get a fine in the mail what two weeks later

So you then have no opportunity at all to contest that sign. You can't remember exactly, you don't have photographic evidence yourself, you know, and it could be something simple like the parking sign is obscured by trees. That happens quite a lot.

So you can't defend yourself if you get a fine two weeks after the event. And I just think it's a little bit richer for parking inspectors to be driving past, you know, snapping people. We had a call on Friday, someone who was...

offloading a disabled family member of theirs or their pregnant wife and next thing you know, bang, five seconds, they're in an illegal spot for and they've got a ticket coming their way. Look, this happens all the time and I have to say the local community are getting really angry about this system and I think it should be changed. I think it should be scrapped.

And if Team Gilly are elected again next month at the local government elections, we will look at it. It's simply not on. Okay. You didn't miss the deadline for nominations? No, no, no, we didn't. No, that was...

Oh dear. We won't go there. We won't go there. So how much pushback have you had from your colleagues on North Sydney Council? Because I know the last 12 months you raised $9 million in ticketless parking fines. Have you had pushback about reinstating the paper ones?

Well, I haven't talked about it yet with the current mayor who supports the current system. Of course it raises revenue. And, you know, that's what it's all about. And quite frankly, we should be managing our budgets just a little bit better so we don't have to rely on parking fines to balance the budget. It is a revenue raiser. Let's stop pretending otherwise.

and let's get back to making the system a little bit, at least a bit fairer and go back to paper tickets. I think the paperless ticket scheme has been in trial for about, well, it's been going for about two years now, two and a half years. It isn't working. People are angry. Rangers do make mistakes.

because they haven't stopped to speak to the person involved, find out whether there's a reason that someone pulled over. As you say, it might be someone disabled, someone pregnant, someone with a young child needing to get out of the car quickly. There are all sorts of reasons where we might temporarily pull over in a zone where we shouldn't be.

But look, the system should be scrapped and I think there'll be an opportunity to do that after the next local government election. Well, Councillor, you're speaking my language. Hopefully you have success to overturn it. Thank you so much for coming on. Well, I hope so. Thank you.