00:00:00
Speaker 1: Because we've done a bit of work to this point in time on the AI car in the city that drives around picking up people for parking infractions. And polling-wise, according to our unofficial data, it's about as popular as the bubonic plague.
00:00:13
Speaker 2: And the other.
00:00:14
Speaker 1: Thing that's remarkable in the Tizer's reporting front-page story today is that one in four of the fines that it's issuing have been torn up or have been defeated, which means there's probably more than 25% of the time it's wrong, accounting for people that don't ever bother doing it. Hasn't disturbed other councils, according to the Tyser's reporting, from pursuing the AI parking fine style of doing things. Mitcham, Salisbury, Burnside and Mount Barker councils have, according to the Tyser's reporting, all started initial trials of using vehicle mounted cameras to monitor parking compliance. Dr Heather Holmes-Ross is the City of Mitcham Mayor. Mayor, good morning to you.
00:00:54
Speaker 3: Good morning, Will.
00:00:55
Speaker 4: Sorry, I'm a bit croaky.
00:00:56
Speaker 2: No, that's all right.
00:00:56
Speaker 1: So is that first point accurate? Are you guys looking at the AI-style car for parking infringements in the city of Mitcham?
00:01:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are.
00:01:05
Speaker 4: We're looking to trial the programs called AeroRanger. So while I can't comment on the Tizer article about the city of Adelaide, I can talk you through the reasons that we're looking at this in Mitcham. What we're hearing from our residents and what council is really trying to work with is the cost of living crisis that we're having. And so we're looking to trial any efficiencies that we can. And of course, having cameras on patrol cars and static cameras and being able to do your parking, look at your parking infringements in this way is an efficiency. And so we're very happy to trial it. The important thing about the aero range is, though, that the fines aren't sent out by the program. They are always checked by a human. And that's really, really important, I think. We don't want to hand over decision-making capacity to an AI. We really want a person to be the one that makes the final decision.
00:02:05
Speaker 3: That's the case for the Adelaide fines as well, though, in the city. There's a human oversight over it, but human oversight can't tell from a photo if that car was stopped there for, 20 seconds or three hours, I guess, in a no-parking zone or otherwise, which I guess is the criticism of the Adelaide City Council's car as well.
00:02:26
Speaker 4: So the Aero Ranger works by driving along. It has the technology that reads the number plate and then it assigns that car a GPS position. Then it comes around again. and if that car has outstayed the parking length, that's when a fine isn't issued, but that car is flagged as an infringement. So I'm not sure what City of Adelaide technology is doing, but certainly ours wouldn't say you've been parked for too long unless it had proof that you had been parked for too long through that GPS data.
00:03:09
Speaker 3: So are you only going to find people when they've overstayed in a car park for too long or will it be looking at, I don't know, if a car is parked halfway across a driveway or if you're parked in a no-stopping zone?
00:03:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. It'll be used for that as well. And we have to think about why we have these parking rules, you know. An example, I suppose, is permit parking where you want people where people, while people, while we don't have a right to have a car park outside our homes, if you live, for example, near a hospital or a school, it's often there is parking, people parking all the time outside the front of your house and you don't want that. They shouldn't be there. So what you can do is load into the data all the people that have permits that should be there, sorry, loaded into the system, so that if a car is picked up that shouldn't be in the zone, then that, again, is flagged. So, yes, I can see where the issues are, that if you just get a snapshot, you could be wrong, but that's why there is the oversight. And, of course, these things do go wrong, and people can say to council that that wasn't right, and City of Adelaide has said, yes, you're right, and have reversed, what was it, 25% of the fines. I think that's a good thing rather than a bad thing. You know, they're trialling something that could save people money via their rates. And when they make a mistake, they're righting that. I can't make the problem.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: Okay. So I just want to take you back. You mentioned efficiencies at the start as one of the justifications for looking at this new technology. When you say that, is the efficiency that you no longer have to pay people and employ fewer people, or is the efficiency that the machinery levies more fines than people do, or is it both of those things?
00:05:04
Speaker 4: That's an excellent question. We don't go out there to fine people. What we're trying to do is make our streets safe. It would be brilliant if we never had to fine anyone because it would mean that everybody was obeying the rules. So that's not a thing that we want to raise revenue in that way. Also, when we talk about efficiencies in terms of... employing people, what we wouldn't do is not employ that person. There are bazillions of other things that people employed by councils could be doing which add more to our community than fining them. So if we can make efficiencies in terms of the number.
00:05:47
Speaker 5: Of people that are out there looking for traffic infringements, then maybe we can add people to the library staff or the community centres or something like that.
00:05:58
Speaker 1: Is that the commitment?
00:06:01
Speaker 4: At Mitchum, always. We're logging the hours that we save through AI.
00:06:07
Speaker 1: So there'll be no net loss in jobs as a result of this technology? I'm just trying to work out where the efficiency will come from. Because if it's not that, then the efficiency must be that it will levy more fines than a normal person would.
00:06:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, we don't want to sack people. We don't want to overtax our people.
00:06:24
Speaker 1: The efficiency is it will fine more people than have been fined before.
00:06:29
Speaker 4: Maybe. Well, if people are parking where they shouldn't be, yes, we're going to find them and we have a more efficient way of finding that. But that's not why we're doing it. We're not doing it to increase the finding revenue. We're doing it so that we can do the job more efficiently, which means that we can then put labour into a place where it's better placed.
00:06:50
Speaker 3: So you mentioned that you don't think what Adelaide City Council's doing is necessarily a bad thing.
00:06:55
Speaker 2: They're trialling something new that could reduce rates.
00:06:58
Speaker 3: Is that what the anticipation is, the expectation is in Mitcham? If there are more fines, if more people are caught doing the wrong thing and more money is paid by people paying those fines, will rates come down?
00:07:14
Speaker 4: That's one outcome, but as I was just saying, that's not our goal. Our goal is to be able to provide better services or reduce rates depending, but always would rather provide better services because in the cost of living crisis, it's better that Canada can provide all the things that people need. We're a great bulk provider of services. So a council may decide to put the efficiencies against rape or they might decide to do it that way but to someone else, to somewhere else, to another service. At Mitcham, we don't want to reduce employment. We would rather divert to another service.
00:08:02
Speaker 1: Dr. Heather Holmes-Ross, the City of Mitcham Mayor on the AI.
00:08:10
Speaker 1: Fines that will be coming to Mitcham. That was very much confirmed. You know what? Dr Ross was willing to come on and actually talk and make the case. And we asked all the mayors, and she was the one that was happy to come on. So, look, people aren't buying it for a start, and nor the justification, and people hate this technology. That much has been established. But at the very least, someone was willing to come on and make the case.
00:08:37
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yep.
00:08:38
Speaker 3: I'm wondering what the state government's doing about it. So when we were talking about this last week, I reached out to the state government to say, are you looking at a law change like they had in Sydney, which would prevent these types of fines from being issued, or at least fines having to be issued in a timely manner to stop people like Anne's daughter getting a fine?
00:08:58
Speaker 2: Anne sent us a text.
00:08:59
Speaker 3: She said, my daughter-in-law was reversing into a park from a no-standing zone in Angus Street She was in the no standing zone for.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: Less than five seconds. The car went past. She got a fine.
00:09:10
Speaker 3: And this is where that car doesn't take in any context. A person walking past a, what are they called?
00:09:17
Speaker 4: A fine.
00:09:18
Speaker 3: I've just got sticker liquor in my head, but what's the official term?
00:09:21
Speaker 2: The person who issues the fines, a ranger, a parking ranger.
00:09:24
Speaker 4: Sorry.
00:09:26
Speaker 3: Walking past would see Anne's daughter-in-law in a no-standing zone purely for the reason of reversing into a car park.
00:09:33
Speaker 2: The car doesn't see that or take in that context.
00:09:35
Speaker 1: We've got almost exactly that example from someone here who says 3.55 p.m. collecting my kids from netball practice at St. Joseph's Kingswood Primary School. I parked in the kiss and drop, not thinking as there were no cars around. $ 95 fine, no discretion, an opportunistic money grab. I'm a cop, and I use common sense and discretion at all times with infringements. So that's someone whose job is in the enforcement of law, appreciating that the black and white computer application of law is actually at odds with how we have the reasonable person test at all times. Now, who's the reasonable person now?
00:10:18
Speaker 2: Well, if there's not a person, if it's a car.
00:10:20
Speaker 3: And sure, there'll be human oversight, but the human oversight will be a person looking at a picture.
00:10:25
Speaker 1: A still picture.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: It's not a video. It's not a video.
00:10:28
Speaker 1: There's no explanation. There's no context.
00:10:30
Speaker 3: Even if it does eventually become a video, which I suspect is what will happen with these cameras as they advance, the video of.
00:10:37
Speaker 2: A car driving past... From a car driving past, rather.
00:10:40
Speaker 3: Still can't take in the context of Anne's daughter-in-law using that no parking zone to reverse into a valid car park.
00:10:46
Speaker 1: That's right.
00:10:46
Speaker 2: This is not about efficiencies. This is about... Well, the efficiency is one of two things.
00:10:51
Speaker 1: You save money because you save people, or you're making more money because you're reaping in more in fines.
00:10:56
Speaker 3: So I reached out to the state government to see if they're planning anything on this.
00:10:59
Speaker 2: That was a week ago. I'm yet to hear back.
00:11:01
Speaker 3: I'm hearing that they're still making calls about if there's going to be a change. But I think now that we've seen at least four other councils looking at the same thing Adelaide City Council is doing, I think the state government's hand will be forced and they'll have to act on this.
Speaker 1: Because we've done a bit of work to this point in time on the AI car in the city that drives around picking up people for parking infractions. And polling-wise, according to our unofficial data, it's about as popular as the bubonic plague.
00:00:13
Speaker 2: And the other.
00:00:14
Speaker 1: Thing that's remarkable in the Tizer's reporting front-page story today is that one in four of the fines that it's issuing have been torn up or have been defeated, which means there's probably more than 25% of the time it's wrong, accounting for people that don't ever bother doing it. Hasn't disturbed other councils, according to the Tyser's reporting, from pursuing the AI parking fine style of doing things. Mitcham, Salisbury, Burnside and Mount Barker councils have, according to the Tyser's reporting, all started initial trials of using vehicle mounted cameras to monitor parking compliance. Dr Heather Holmes-Ross is the City of Mitcham Mayor. Mayor, good morning to you.
00:00:54
Speaker 3: Good morning, Will.
00:00:55
Speaker 4: Sorry, I'm a bit croaky.
00:00:56
Speaker 2: No, that's all right.
00:00:56
Speaker 1: So is that first point accurate? Are you guys looking at the AI-style car for parking infringements in the city of Mitcham?
00:01:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are.
00:01:05
Speaker 4: We're looking to trial the programs called AeroRanger. So while I can't comment on the Tizer article about the city of Adelaide, I can talk you through the reasons that we're looking at this in Mitcham. What we're hearing from our residents and what council is really trying to work with is the cost of living crisis that we're having. And so we're looking to trial any efficiencies that we can. And of course, having cameras on patrol cars and static cameras and being able to do your parking, look at your parking infringements in this way is an efficiency. And so we're very happy to trial it. The important thing about the aero range is, though, that the fines aren't sent out by the program. They are always checked by a human. And that's really, really important, I think. We don't want to hand over decision-making capacity to an AI. We really want a person to be the one that makes the final decision.
00:02:05
Speaker 3: That's the case for the Adelaide fines as well, though, in the city. There's a human oversight over it, but human oversight can't tell from a photo if that car was stopped there for, 20 seconds or three hours, I guess, in a no-parking zone or otherwise, which I guess is the criticism of the Adelaide City Council's car as well.
00:02:26
Speaker 4: So the Aero Ranger works by driving along. It has the technology that reads the number plate and then it assigns that car a GPS position. Then it comes around again. and if that car has outstayed the parking length, that's when a fine isn't issued, but that car is flagged as an infringement. So I'm not sure what City of Adelaide technology is doing, but certainly ours wouldn't say you've been parked for too long unless it had proof that you had been parked for too long through that GPS data.
00:03:09
Speaker 3: So are you only going to find people when they've overstayed in a car park for too long or will it be looking at, I don't know, if a car is parked halfway across a driveway or if you're parked in a no-stopping zone?
00:03:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. It'll be used for that as well. And we have to think about why we have these parking rules, you know. An example, I suppose, is permit parking where you want people where people, while people, while we don't have a right to have a car park outside our homes, if you live, for example, near a hospital or a school, it's often there is parking, people parking all the time outside the front of your house and you don't want that. They shouldn't be there. So what you can do is load into the data all the people that have permits that should be there, sorry, loaded into the system, so that if a car is picked up that shouldn't be in the zone, then that, again, is flagged. So, yes, I can see where the issues are, that if you just get a snapshot, you could be wrong, but that's why there is the oversight. And, of course, these things do go wrong, and people can say to council that that wasn't right, and City of Adelaide has said, yes, you're right, and have reversed, what was it, 25% of the fines. I think that's a good thing rather than a bad thing. You know, they're trialling something that could save people money via their rates. And when they make a mistake, they're righting that. I can't make the problem.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: Okay. So I just want to take you back. You mentioned efficiencies at the start as one of the justifications for looking at this new technology. When you say that, is the efficiency that you no longer have to pay people and employ fewer people, or is the efficiency that the machinery levies more fines than people do, or is it both of those things?
00:05:04
Speaker 4: That's an excellent question. We don't go out there to fine people. What we're trying to do is make our streets safe. It would be brilliant if we never had to fine anyone because it would mean that everybody was obeying the rules. So that's not a thing that we want to raise revenue in that way. Also, when we talk about efficiencies in terms of... employing people, what we wouldn't do is not employ that person. There are bazillions of other things that people employed by councils could be doing which add more to our community than fining them. So if we can make efficiencies in terms of the number.
00:05:47
Speaker 5: Of people that are out there looking for traffic infringements, then maybe we can add people to the library staff or the community centres or something like that.
00:05:58
Speaker 1: Is that the commitment?
00:06:01
Speaker 4: At Mitchum, always. We're logging the hours that we save through AI.
00:06:07
Speaker 1: So there'll be no net loss in jobs as a result of this technology? I'm just trying to work out where the efficiency will come from. Because if it's not that, then the efficiency must be that it will levy more fines than a normal person would.
00:06:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, we don't want to sack people. We don't want to overtax our people.
00:06:24
Speaker 1: The efficiency is it will fine more people than have been fined before.
00:06:29
Speaker 4: Maybe. Well, if people are parking where they shouldn't be, yes, we're going to find them and we have a more efficient way of finding that. But that's not why we're doing it. We're not doing it to increase the finding revenue. We're doing it so that we can do the job more efficiently, which means that we can then put labour into a place where it's better placed.
00:06:50
Speaker 3: So you mentioned that you don't think what Adelaide City Council's doing is necessarily a bad thing.
00:06:55
Speaker 2: They're trialling something new that could reduce rates.
00:06:58
Speaker 3: Is that what the anticipation is, the expectation is in Mitcham? If there are more fines, if more people are caught doing the wrong thing and more money is paid by people paying those fines, will rates come down?
00:07:14
Speaker 4: That's one outcome, but as I was just saying, that's not our goal. Our goal is to be able to provide better services or reduce rates depending, but always would rather provide better services because in the cost of living crisis, it's better that Canada can provide all the things that people need. We're a great bulk provider of services. So a council may decide to put the efficiencies against rape or they might decide to do it that way but to someone else, to somewhere else, to another service. At Mitcham, we don't want to reduce employment. We would rather divert to another service.
00:08:02
Speaker 1: Dr. Heather Holmes-Ross, the City of Mitcham Mayor on the AI.
00:08:10
Speaker 1: Fines that will be coming to Mitcham. That was very much confirmed. You know what? Dr Ross was willing to come on and actually talk and make the case. And we asked all the mayors, and she was the one that was happy to come on. So, look, people aren't buying it for a start, and nor the justification, and people hate this technology. That much has been established. But at the very least, someone was willing to come on and make the case.
00:08:37
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yep.
00:08:38
Speaker 3: I'm wondering what the state government's doing about it. So when we were talking about this last week, I reached out to the state government to say, are you looking at a law change like they had in Sydney, which would prevent these types of fines from being issued, or at least fines having to be issued in a timely manner to stop people like Anne's daughter getting a fine?
00:08:58
Speaker 2: Anne sent us a text.
00:08:59
Speaker 3: She said, my daughter-in-law was reversing into a park from a no-standing zone in Angus Street She was in the no standing zone for.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: Less than five seconds. The car went past. She got a fine.
00:09:10
Speaker 3: And this is where that car doesn't take in any context. A person walking past a, what are they called?
00:09:17
Speaker 4: A fine.
00:09:18
Speaker 3: I've just got sticker liquor in my head, but what's the official term?
00:09:21
Speaker 2: The person who issues the fines, a ranger, a parking ranger.
00:09:24
Speaker 4: Sorry.
00:09:26
Speaker 3: Walking past would see Anne's daughter-in-law in a no-standing zone purely for the reason of reversing into a car park.
00:09:33
Speaker 2: The car doesn't see that or take in that context.
00:09:35
Speaker 1: We've got almost exactly that example from someone here who says 3.55 p.m. collecting my kids from netball practice at St. Joseph's Kingswood Primary School. I parked in the kiss and drop, not thinking as there were no cars around. $ 95 fine, no discretion, an opportunistic money grab. I'm a cop, and I use common sense and discretion at all times with infringements. So that's someone whose job is in the enforcement of law, appreciating that the black and white computer application of law is actually at odds with how we have the reasonable person test at all times. Now, who's the reasonable person now?
00:10:18
Speaker 2: Well, if there's not a person, if it's a car.
00:10:20
Speaker 3: And sure, there'll be human oversight, but the human oversight will be a person looking at a picture.
00:10:25
Speaker 1: A still picture.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: It's not a video. It's not a video.
00:10:28
Speaker 1: There's no explanation. There's no context.
00:10:30
Speaker 3: Even if it does eventually become a video, which I suspect is what will happen with these cameras as they advance, the video of.
00:10:37
Speaker 2: A car driving past... From a car driving past, rather.
00:10:40
Speaker 3: Still can't take in the context of Anne's daughter-in-law using that no parking zone to reverse into a valid car park.
00:10:46
Speaker 1: That's right.
00:10:46
Speaker 2: This is not about efficiencies. This is about... Well, the efficiency is one of two things.
00:10:51
Speaker 1: You save money because you save people, or you're making more money because you're reaping in more in fines.
00:10:56
Speaker 3: So I reached out to the state government to see if they're planning anything on this.
00:10:59
Speaker 2: That was a week ago. I'm yet to hear back.
00:11:01
Speaker 3: I'm hearing that they're still making calls about if there's going to be a change. But I think now that we've seen at least four other councils looking at the same thing Adelaide City Council is doing, I think the state government's hand will be forced and they'll have to act on this.
