The New South Wales government is set to ban councils from issuing ticketless parking fines saying the practice is unfair. Councils collected $155 million from parking fines last year after the previous government introduced the paper-less method.
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00:00The NSW government has maintained that the ticketless parking system is incredibly unpopular
00:07amongst drivers and motorists and they feel it's not necessarily fair on them either.
00:12The ticketless parking system was introduced back in 2020 by the former state government
00:17and what it meant was that parking fines became paperless.
00:21So instead of receiving a fine on your windscreen, you would receive it in the mail instead.
00:27But what this resulted in was a lot of people not realising they had actually been fined
00:31and they were, in some cases, accumulating them.
00:35So the NSW government, the current one led by Labor, had been making some headway with
00:40trying to change the system this year.
00:42Earlier this year they had actually reached out to councils and asked them to stop going
00:47ticketless and actually put in place an on-the-spot notification to let drivers and motorists
00:54know that they had indeed received a fine.
00:57Their argument was that it wasn't really working as a deterrent, so people were still going
01:02to places where they shouldn't be parking and getting fines and more and more fines
01:06and they just felt like it wasn't working anyway in terms of being ticketless.
01:11But also they just felt that the number of fines had just exploded.
01:14They said that the number of infringement notices handed out in the last financial year
01:18had increased by 50% compared to the year before.
01:21So the number of tickets and fines handed out were just exploding and they just felt
01:26that that wasn't fair to motorists and it wasn't really working.
01:28So they want to bring back the on-the-spot notification.
01:33So they actually had reached out to some councils to see if they would just bring that back
01:37and then bring back on-the-spot notifications.
01:39Here in Sydney though that was met with a little bit of pushback a few months ago.
01:43Some councils said that they didn't really want to change, they liked the ticketless
01:46parking system mostly because it meant that a lot of their staff weren't being abused
01:50as much or harassed, so it actually protected a lot of the rangers out there.
01:55But also you could see your fine, you could see it on the Service NSW app, you could access
02:00it digitally, not just in the mail.
02:02With that said though, the NSW Government is holding firm on this particular issue.
02:06They really want to reform this particular ticketless parking fine scheme and they're
02:12seeking to introduce legislation this month in order to reform it and make it happen.
02:18New South Wales Premier Chris Mins spoke about this topic a little bit earlier this
02:22morning.
02:23If there's councils out there that are relying on ticketless parking as a revenue stream,
02:28that'll have to end.
02:29You'll have to issue the ticket and see the behaviour change.
02:32Ultimately all of these fines right across New South Wales, whether it's for parking
02:35or speeding, are about changing behaviour.
02:38We would much prefer people not commit the offence in the first place rather than try
02:42and grab rivers of gold from the pockets of families across the state.
02:47This is a common sense change.
02:49This particular legislation to be introduced by the state government will be brought in
02:55this month.
02:56It does have to undergo a parliamentary process before it's formally implemented.
02:59But the NSW Government is seeking that when you go to your car, you will see a physical
03:05notification that you have been fined.
03:08It may be the fine itself, it may be a notification that it's coming in the mail, but at the end
03:11of the day it will be there on your car to let you know.