City of Darwin: Parking fines hit $1m, tip fees almost $20m

Darwin commuters and visitors have forked out more than $1 million in parking fines to the council, representing a boost in economic activity following Covid.

PARKING fine revenue in the City of Darwin municipality hit more than $1 million last financial year, an increase of $210,000 from 2020.

And Covid lockdowns can be blamed for the uptick reported in 2021.

“We did experience an economic downturn (in 2020) and there was lesser utilisation of carparks in the CBD,” City of Darwin chief executive Scott Waters said.

“Covid had a huge impact on revenue across the board with everything within local government.”

Mr Waters said the $1.182m mark in parking fines was “fairly normal” for a regular year.

“Where you’re seeing that increase is where economy activity has happened again.”

“Our council had a zero per cent rate increase — we didn’t raise our fees at all so it’s not a result of that,” he said.

Real time figures available on the council’s yourDarwin portal show a peak in the amount of revenue made in the first quarter of the financial year compared to the rest of the year, with more than $200,000 in fines dished out in those three months.

In the first quarter of this financial year $200,580 in fines were collected.

The annual report also revealed a big jump in the amount of revenue coming through waste disposal tipping fees, which Mr Waters said was mostly commercial.

$19.096 million in revenue came through last year, compared to $14.024 million the previous year.

Mr Waters said this too was due to the lockdown in early 2020.

“Construction ground to a halt and really slowed down so that affected that financial year,” he said.

Originally published as City of Darwin: Parking fines hit $1m, tip fees almost $20m