Clarissa Bye: Sydney beach parking permits expose a growing divide in our public spaces
Postcode privileges are a sign of a growing divide in Sydney’s suburbs, as more and more community assets are controlled by petty officials, writes Clarissa Bye.
Opinion
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I once went on a holiday where we stayed for a few nights in Nice, the capital of the French Riviera.
It was summer, and missing Sydney’s beaches, we decided to go for a swim. It was appalling.
This legendary place, the location of so many famous French paintings, was divided up into 15 private beaches, complete with picket fences and Inspector Clouseau guards.
Our hotel gave us a coupon for our section, a long walk away, taking us ages to find amid the crowds.
Instead of sand the ground was covered in pebbles and rocks that cut our feet and stubbed our toes. In the water, we had to keep an eye on where our small patch was, for fear of trespassing into the wrong zone while walking back.
Thank goodness they can’t do that in Australia, we told ourselves when we returned home.
Last summer my daughter and I visited quite a few beaches around Sydney after getting a craze for snorkelling.
We bought new, properly fitted masks and flippers from a specialist shop for the first time ever.
We even followed their hair-raising instructions to use a lighter to burn the plastic film on the lens — to stop them fogging up.
My aunt has also caught the bug, as my cousin in Manly is an avid snorkler.
But she mentioned the other day how Mosman Council has jacked up parking fees for anyone who wants to go to Balmoral Beach or Clifton Gardens.
The fees have risen 75 per cent, from $20 to $35 a day, and will hit $40 a day this coming summer.
The wealthy locals are exempt. Everyone else is called a “tourist”.
Curious, I looked up the Northern Beaches Council’s parking permit policy. They cover a vast swath of beaches from Avalon to Manly. If you’re a local resident you’re entitled to a free beach parking permit.
But if you come from Sydney’s west, or anywhere else, you don’t get the free permit.
In the city’s east, if you want to park on Elizabeth Drive at Bondi Beach, or at Bronte Beach, and are a local ratepayer, you can buy an annual parking permit for $160.
For anyone else outside of Waverley Council the fee is a jaw-dropping $1790.
That’s the same council that opposed the late 1990s plan to extend the Eastern Suburbs train line to the beach on the grounds “it could change the character of the beach area because of a new influx of people” which would result in an “increase in pollution, crime”.
Beaches have always held a special place in the Australian imagination.
It’s in our paintings, photography, books, movies — a great equaliser, somewhere free where people from all walks of life mingle.
“While our image of ourselves as a nation of egalitarian beachgoers lounging on our verandas in perpetual summer is a fantasy, there’s no denying the Australian coastline is the most appealing view for us: an alternatively stirring and harmonious, dangerous and serene assortment of beaches,” wrote author Robert Drewe.
But slowly, incrementally, a class system is being established here.
One for the wealthy few who can afford to live within walking distance and something different for everyone else.
The argument in favour of the beach parking permits says, well, the locals have paid their rates and this helps pay for the rubbish and toilets, so they are entitled to it.
But everyone who owns a home in Sydney — and NSW — pays rates.
Your access to community assets shouldn’t come down to postcodes.
The postcode divide was starkly highlighted during the pandemic lockdowns when police used horses to enforce mask wearing in the streets of the west and south west at the same time the Bondi locals sunbaked mask-less.
Your suburb affected your life in a very material way when the supposedly Liberal Berejiklian Government imposed a postcode lottery determining your freedom to travel or work.
My Georges River Council was stuck in a no-go zone for weeks after any theoretical risk had dissipated.
Later FOI requests uncovered the disparity in police enforcement and Covid fines.
Blacktown residents were fined 848 times, Liverpool residents 1291, Woollahra residents 25, Edgecliff 31, Double Bay 29.
The push to control by the officials can also be seen in the New Year’s Eve fencing off of public parks along the harbour.
Each year more and more picnic spots are subjected to being barricaded, ticketed and sold out in advance.
They argue we need this private security segregation for our safety.
Yet New Year’s Eve, especially the earlier fireworks, has mostly been a very safe family event, well before they started all this up.
Another geographical disparity is the tollways.
As Monday’s parliamentary report on tolls points out, the legacy of ad hoc tolls funding new roads has meant the burden has fallen unevenly — it all boils down to where you live.
Users of the M2 motorway pay three to four times more on a return journey to the city compared to those driving on the M5.
“ … data indicates that the households based in Wollondilly, Camden, Liverpool, Penrith, Fairfield, Blacktown and the Hills District encounter the highest toll expenses. Of the top seven areas outlined in these findings, six are based in Western Sydney,” they reported.
Australia’s egalitarianism is what has made us so great.
We shouldn’t be heading down the path of a not-so-nice Nice world, of postcode privilege and petty Inspector Clouseau bureaucrats controlling our lives.
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