[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Chrissy Mack from Radio Northern Beaches and you've just tuned in to the Listen and Chat with Chrissy Mack podcast. This is the space where we pull no punches, sometimes a little controversial, sometimes downright outrageous, and sometimes just packed full of information that is interesting to know. Okay, it's time for another Chrissy Mack rant and I am really ticked off about this one.
[00:00:24] Is it just me or has the Northern Beaches Council once again managed to turn a routine council service into an infuriating administrative nightmare for residents? If you remember rightly, we had the kitchen caddy episode where they wasted money on kitchen caddies for the bin trial. And the questionnaire for that one had some intrusive questions on it that were totally unnecessary.
[00:00:51] And now we have the transition to electronic parking permits. Council already holds our names, our property addresses, our ratepayers records on file. The only missing piece of information is our vehicle registration numbers.
[00:01:07] But rather than utilise internal data to bridge the gap, Council has effectively recruited thousands of residents as unpaid clerical staff to populate what seems to be a brand new system that seemingly cannot even perform the basic transfer of their existing database. I do not merely view providing my driver's license as an overreach. I strongly resent being coerced into doing so.
[00:01:36] In an era of constant, high-profile cyber breaches, handing over unnecessarily highly sensitive identification simply to park in our own local area is an unacceptable privacy risk.
[00:01:51] The overreach is so ingridious that several of my friends are flatly refusing to comply, meaning that local Northern Beaches residents will now be forced to pay the parking at their own local beaches out of principle. To add insult to injury, the automated software is absurdly rigid.
[00:02:12] When I attempted to set up the account, why I have to have an account, I do not know, the system failed to verify my address simply because my license listed my street as a Cres, not a Crescent. While council records spell it at Crescent, my license has Cres on it.
[00:02:33] My reward for the four missing letters was having to manually scan and upload both the front and the back of my license alongside a rates notice documents the council already possess. All this raises a glaring question. Exactly how much ratepayer money was spent procuring and developing this clunky software system?
[00:02:53] While our rates continue to climb under the guise of funding essential infrastructure, what we are actually seeing is hard-earned community money being wasted on unnecessary digital bureaucracy, all while shifting the administrative workload onto the public. And if you think the setup process is bad, wait until you hear what happens when you sell your car, buy a new one, or even take a loaner vehicle from a mechanic.
[00:03:20] Council's new shiny v-permit system puts a strict limit on how many times you can update your registration online. Put your permit onto a loan car while yours is serviced? Congratulations, you just burnt through one of your allowed changes. And heaven forbid you sell your car or get hit with an emergency after exhausting those limits. As I understand it.
[00:03:47] To get council to update it, you'll have to produce formal proof of transfer or a police report for review. If it's a paid permit and you run out of changes, you don't just update it, you have to cancel it and pay for a brand new one. With council flatly declaring no refunds. Is that even legal?
[00:04:09] So every time your household changes vehicles, you're trapped in a cycle of uploading paperwork, calling customer service, or jumping through hoops just to park where you live. I'm sorry, but this is totally unacceptable. I'm Chrissy Mack, and yet again, these are my opinions and not necessarily anybody else's. All right, I hope I've given you a lot to think about and talk about and debate and maybe disagree with. Don't forget to follow, like and share.
[00:04:37] Stay safe and I'll catch you next time.