Amendments to Requesting Council Reduce Parking Costs and Increase Parking Availability in Milton and Surrounding Suburbs

Infrastructure Committee Clause A

Speech to Council Chambers - CR Seal Chong Wah

Full Chambers meeting - 4th August 2026

I rise to speak on the Infrastructure Committee report Clause A, regarding sudden changes to car parking in the Milton riverside precinct. This is another petition about the parking changes that Brisbane City Council made without notice in August 2025. Overnight, metered parking fees rose, hours were cut, and 61% of resident permit exceptions were removed in affected zones. As we can expect from this LNP administration, there was no consultation. No warning. No notice to residents, local businesses, or even to me as the local Councillor. The community was simply kept in the dark. Even council managers admitted this change was a complete mess. This caused lots of stress and outrage to the local residents and local businesses. This was inconsiderate, and undemocratic.

Now this didn’t come with any more protected bikeways, or better public transport. This didn’t swap any car parks for bike parks. Thanks to this LNP administration cutting services in 2024, Milton’s ferry terminal only sees ferries every half-hour, and that didn’t change. The trains didn’t run more often. Buses on Coronation Drive didn’t get a bus lane, and buses on Milton Road didn’t become high-frequency like the Greens have called for. These changes are a revenue-raising exercise. Pure and simple. It’s charging more to residents and customers to local businesses, while this LNP administration won’t make developers pay their fair share for infrastructure, and cuts maintenance and operating budgets. This is a symptom of a Council operating in austerity.

To be clear: we do need to move away from valuing car parks as a sacred commodity. The pedestrian crossings, protected bikeways, and bus lanes that this city desperately needs will often take away some car parking. And that’s fine so we can live in a vibrant well planned sustainable city. After residents and businesses voted for a pedestrian crossing in Rosalie Village in a community vote, I’m planning to fund this crossing from my Suburban Enhancement Fund. The crossing will remove 4 car parks, in order to make walking around the village much safer and easier. Especially for young kids, mums with their prams, people with disabilities and the elderly. I have witnessed many scary near misses where the planned crossing will be installed. 

We need to create safer streets for people. But to make these kinds of changes, this Council needs to bring people on the journey. We should be consulting and informing residents about alternatives to driving. We need to shift how we all think about getting around this city, and how we think about this city’s public space. And we need to fund it, now.We should be making our neighbourhoods safer and easier to walk around. We should build world-class, safe, protected bikeways across this city. We should fund frequent buses, citywide. We should give everybody the freedom to choose how they move around Brisbane, with plans that we draw up with our residents.And we certainly shouldn’t poison the well with revenue-raising exercises like the overnight parking changes in Milton.Our community requested that Council reverse the recent changes to parking restrictions in Milton, and actually talk to residents and local businesses about any changes. This Council’s response doesn’t reflect that at all.