Car park operators accused of ‘rip off’ by transport minister

Private operators have been accused of scaring people into paying “illegal” parking fines, with Queensland’s Transport Minister seeking an urgent review of regulations that allow businesses to access motorists’ names and home addresses.

Transport Minister Mark Bailey has ripped into private parking operators accessing the vehicle registration database to send payment demands to motorists for so-called “parking breaches.”

Hundreds of motorists have been slugged with an $88 fine from a company called Smart Compliance Management for overstaying at private car parks including McDonald’s at Albion.

Bailey told City Beat Wednesday that he has asked for an urgent review into the current transport regulations that allow private parking operators including Smart Complaince to obtain the home addresses and names of vehicle owners.

“On paper this looks like a blatant rip-off,” Bailey told City Beat. “I’ll be asking my department to review the situation and working with other departments to find a solution because we can’t have Queenslanders being scared into a rip off.

“I’d also suggest to businesses using these type of parking operators that they’ll quickly lose customers and should reconsidering using them. The advice I’ve been given is it is illegal to fine people in a private car park.”

That practice of debt-chasing parking firms accessing personal registration details was outlawed in southern states years ago amid growing fears private details, including people’s home addresses and vehicle registration, could fall into the wrong hands.

A trip to their local McDonald’s on New Years Day has resulted in one group of Brisbane motorists being threatened with legal action by Smart Compliance Management after it obtained registration and home address details from the Transport Department.

The motorists say they each received a $88 “parking breach” notice from the company after allegedly breaching by 30 minutes the new 90 minute limit at McDonald’s Albion, where they were enjoying a lunch with family.

The notice was sent to the home addresses of the drivers after the company, which is a subsidiary of ASX-listed multinational Smart Parking, was able to obtain the licence plate and registration details of their cars from the Queensland Transport Department data base. Their vehicles were photographed and time stamped as they entered and exited the car park.

The parking signs at McDonalds Albion. Photo: Glen Norris

Smart Parking, according to its most recent annual report, is doing very nicely out of parking breach notices after rolling out an aggressive push into Australia and New Zealand in the past 18 months. The company now earns almost $10m from its parking management business with the number of “parking breach” notices soaring from virtually nothing two years ago to more than 5400 across Australia in the last three months of 2022. Queensland appears to be the focus of the company’s operations with the company recently opening a Smart Compliance Management office in Brisbane.

Smart Parking can currently use an exemption in the Transport Operations Regulation that allows registation details to be released to a third party if that party intends to litigate over a breach of contract - in this case a claim for a parking overstay.

The only problem is that parking operators have over the past decade consistently failed in court to prove a breach of contract in similar circumstances. It is therefore highly unlikely Smart Parking intends to waste its money in litigation.

Smart Parking has defended it business model, noting it systems are “used around the world in the parking industry to manage and monitor the use of parking spaces, and to ensure fairness.” A company spokesperson says the privacy and protection of all data collected met the requirements of the Privacy Act.

“Private property owners and operators are entitled by law to regulate the use of their property, including whom may enter that property, including imposing fair and reasonable terms and conditions on those wishing to park their vehicles on the property,” the spokesperson says. Comment has been sought from McDonalds.

Transport and Main Roads Minister Mark Bailey

A spokesperson for Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman says reports that private car park companies are issuing demands for payment where they are not warranted are concerning. “Payment notices, invoices, or demands for payment by private carparks are not fines,” Fentiman says. “Only governments or courts can issue fines.”

She says if motorists believed they had been wrongly issued with a demand for payment and wish to dispute it, they should contact the carpark operator and explain why.

“If the matter remains unsolved, you should seek independent legal advice,” she says. She added that if signs are not adequately displayed in the private carpark outlining, in plain English, the terms and conditions of using the carpark, people should contact the Office for Fair Trading. “Similarly, if these signs are misleading, or you are issued a demand for payment in excess of that listed on the signage, you should contact the Office for Fair Trading,” she says. “Private carpark companies should be aware that the Palaszczuk Government will not tolerate misleading or unfair behaviour, and that care should be taken to ensure demands are not issued in cases where there are insufficient grounds for doing so.”

Originally published as Car park operators accused of ‘rip off’ by transport minister