New South Wales,
Australia — JOHN VOLKERTS has a black belt in
karate, competed six times in one day in 2004, and still
instructs a few students in early morning classes. To the
annoyance of some of his neighbours, he also has a Roads
and Traffic Authority mobility parking tag in his car
that used to get him a disabled parking spot allocated
out the front of his house.
As well as the parking spot, the
little white tag on his dashboard entitles him and
256,000 other NSW permit holders to special parking
privileges wherever parking is allowed. Holders of the
tags can park all day on any parking meter or in any
parking zone where parking for an hour or more is
permitted. And it's always free.
The permits that allow all-day free
parking have become hugely popular among Sydney
motorists, with allegations they are being sold and even
included in employment packages. A permit can save $150
or more each week on parking. In parts of the city and
busy suburban centres such as Chatswood and Bondi
Junction as many as half the cars parked in some streets
during business hours display the tags.
Over the past week the Herald has
highlighted the huge number of cars using these permits
and has been swamped by letters, emails and phone calls
from readers who say they've been complaining for years
about the abuse of the system but the RTA does nothing to
investigate it.
Numerous readers say they have
challenged drivers apparently using borrowed permits as
they have no visible disability. They have complained to
the RTA, to police and councils, irked by the widespread
use of these permits when they have to pay to
park.
Plenty of permit holders have
complained that because their serious disabilities are
not apparent, they are frequently abused when they use
their tags to park.
This fury over the misuse of
permits prompted Paul Reed to complain to the RTA in
December 2004 about his black-belt neighbour, Volkerts.
He wanted an explanation why one of the "fittest, most
active people in this street" could be given a
permit.
He wrote to the RTA's medical unit,
based in Grafton, saying that residents in his street in
Bronte were "baffled" as to how Volkerts got a permit as
he was "frequently seen carrying shopping and building
materials up the steep slope from the street to his
house".
"Indeed, he appears so fit he
short-cuts up a steep grassed slope instead of using some
nearby steps. He regularly walks to Bronte Beach to swim,
a round trip, up and down a steep hill, of about 2.4
kilometres."
When he had heard nothing by March
last year, nearly four months later, Reed wrote again to
the RTA and two weeks later got a letter telling him his
concerns were being investigated.
For three more months, nothing
happened so in June Reed wrote asking why the RTA was
reluctant to investigate his complaint about his
neighbour, who was apparently enjoying "blooming
health".
Reed is clearly a man who knows how
to deal with bureaucracy. When he was fobbed off he took
advice from the NSW Ombudsman on how to complain about
the RTA's failure to investigate his allegations. Go to
the top, he was told. So, in August, he wrote to the then
head of the RTA, Paul Forward. It worked.
Within four days, Forward replied,
promising to investigate. After a further six weeks, the
RTA finally wrote to Volkerts to find out if he was truly
handicapped, and threatened to revoke his permit if a
satisfactory reply was not forthcoming.
"An allegation has been made that
you may not have a mobility impairment as you have the
ability to walk to Bronte Beach from your home, which
involves a round trip of approximately two kilometres.
Furthermore, it is also alleged that you are an active
instructor in martial arts," the letter said.
Volkerts wrote back in detail. He'd
suffered a serious back injury in a car accident in 1998
and two years later had four screws and two rods inserted
into his spine. He had undergone a bone graft, was in
constant pain, had lost his job as an aircraft engineer
because he could not walk to the hangar.
He denied walking to the beach and
said any walking left him in pain requiring rest and
medication. While he still taught karate, it was mainly
to children, adding, "I can no longer do techniques when
[a] demonstration is required".
He did take part in karate bouts in
2004, although it was against the advice of his
doctor.
His letter, including his doctor's
offer to provide further information, led the RTA to
dismiss Reed's complaint. Volkerts has kept his
permit.
While he says he has a legitimate
need for his permit, people often challenge him when he
uses it because they don't regard him as disabled. "The
moment you mention your back, they don't like
it."
Despite his experience, Volkerts
says the abundance of the tags on Sydney cars has
convinced him there's a problem with the
scheme.
"When I was walking up College
Street … I noticed how many permits there were and I
thought there can't be this many disabled people …
it was about every third car," he says.
Widespread rorting of the mobility
parking scheme prompted the RTA to overhaul it in 2003
and replace old permits with new ones carrying
photographs. But privacy concerns put to the RTA by
disabled drivers means the photographs are not displayed,
so anyone can borrow a friend's card.
Despite the changes to the scheme,
NSW is the only state that allows all-day, free parking
in metered areas for all permit holders.
Some states, such as Queensland,
have different permits with different benefits, according
to the level of disability. Blue permits allow parking
all day but they are available only to people requiring a
wheelchair or a walking frame. Others get a red ticket,
but they can be used only in disabled parking spots, not
metered parking bays, for which they must pay.
In South Australia permit holders
can park for 90 minutes longer on a meter than other
motorists but they have to pay.
Even the sparsely populated
Northern Territory takes a tougher line than NSW. It
allows its disabled drivers to use parking bays for twice
as long as other motorists but no one gets to park all
day.
The NSW Premier, Morris Iemma, has
promised to review the scheme, and the RTA has planned a
forum to discuss how to improve it.
Judging from the level of anger
about the scheme, the changes can't come soon
enough.
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