Secure Parking attendant “told off” for helping grieving mother at Gold Coast Hospital

A CITY councillor says an employee of Secure Parking was ‘told off’ for letting a grieving mother — whose daughter had just died — out of the Gold Coast University Hospital car park without paying.

A CITY councillor says an employee of Secure Parking was “told off’’ for letting a grieving mother, whose daughter had just died, out of the Gold Coast University Hospital car park without paying.

Division 6 councillor Dawn Crichlow says she has a “stack” of cases involving locals who have complained about the hospital parking giant.

And a senior Gold Coast lawyer has also bought into public outrage over hospital parking fees, urging people to mount an “email blitz’’ on the Premier and Health Minister to force change.

Parking at the Gold Coast University Hospital. Picture Glenn Hampson

Cr Crichlow said yesterday the car park employee’s account of being disciplined for showing compassion and allowing the woman to leave without paying — because she had been in a panic and left home without money or cards — took the cake.

“The situation is awful for people and unfortunately because it is private, there is not much that can be done,” Cr Crichlow said.

“I had a man come to me a year or so ago. He had worked for the car park but had left because he had been told off by the company.

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The Gold Coast University Hospital. Picture Glenn Hampson

“He told me that a lady had rushed in to park her car without her wallet because she was told her daughter was extremely ill. She was caring for her grandchild at the time.

“Unfortunately her daughter had ended up passing away when she got there.

“He lifted the gate to let her out for free because of the situation.’’

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The issue of $17 a day fees charged by Secure Parking blew up this week when another mother, Donna Watts Smith, told how she had been struggling to afford the daily cost of parking when she visited her sick daughter at the Gold Coast University Hospital.

Cr Dawn Crichlow. Picture Mike Batterham

Ms Watts Smith said it had been costing her more than $100 a week, which she could not afford, so she had to reduce visits to every second day.

Bruce Simmonds, litigation director with Broadbeach law firm Parker Simmonds Solicitors & Lawyers, said hospital parking “discounts’’ introduced by the Palaszczuk Government last year were at best only a token nod to the issue, and only applied to a narrow group of users who had to jump through hoops to qualify.

Mr Simmonds yesterday called for an “email blitz’’ to demand the State Government immediately make all public hospital parking free or heavily subsidised.

“The way to get that message through to them could be an email blitz campaign by Gold Coasters directly to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Health Minister Dr Steven Miles,” he said.

“If enough people demand change they will listen because you can guarantee Secure Parking doesn’t care about the families that are there to support the patients or the thousands of outpatients attending multiple clinics every week.”

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Mr Simmonds, whose clients include hospital patients struggling with the parking costs, slammed the government-funded discounts as “pathetic’’.

“We act for victims of car accidents and work accidents who are treated at the hospital. The insurers pay large sums of money to the hospitals to subsidise the patients.

“Hospital parking charges at Gold Coast are cruel and disadvantage the very people who need to go there for care and treatment. We need a community-driven campaign here to force government to provide free parking.”