The South Australian government has reached an agreement with the Greens that will both avoid industrial action by healthcare workers and allow restrictions on paid parking at shopping centres to pass parliament.
Amendments to the government's bill on the issue will ensure up to 17,000 hospital workers have parking fees capped at $2.50 per day at the hospital where they work.
Others will have the option of catching public transport to work for free.
"This delivers the right outcome for healthcare workers but at the same time ensuring we do have car parking spaces available for patients and loved ones for when they need it, too," Premier Peter Malinauskas said.
"This is a thoughtful, pragmatic outcome that is also principled."
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation negotiated the same discounts for its members in October, but the new proposal extends the offer to all other hospital workers.
Cleaners, orderlies, sterilisation technicians and catering staff from Adelaide's metropolitan hospitals walked off the job in August to call for parking subsidies in place during the COVID-19 state of emergency to continue indefinitely.
The Scentre Group, which owns the Westfield Tea Tree Plaza shopping centre next to the Modbury Hospital and an O-Bahn bus interchange, wants to introduce paid parking to stop commuters, hospital workers and hospital visitors taking parks from shoppers.
It blocked off part of its car park near the hospital last month and earlier this week closed the kiss-and-drop area near the bus interchange before 8:45am.
The government's bill passed the upper house today with the support of the Greens.
Greens MLC Robert Simms said Westfield's behaviour had been "appalling in recent weeks".
"The parliament should serve the interests of the community, not big corporations, and that's what we're going to see in the parliament later this afternoon," he said.
The legislation would require councils to approve paid parking at large shopping centres after community consultation.
Westfield has had paid parking at its shopping centre in West Lakes since 2013 and has previously been approved to install boom gates at Marion but has not installed them.
The rules would not apply to parking in the Adelaide CBD.
Opposition planning spokeswoman Michelle Lensink said the deal means retail workers will have free parking while hospital workers will have to pay $2.50.
"We will see people using the local streets around Tea Tree Plaza [for parking], so for residents within the City of Tea Tree Gully, this is going to cause a massive confusion, because this government just is trying to help one of its unions in particular — Peter Malinauskas's union, the shoppies' union.
"He looks after them before he looks after all South Australians."
In a statement, Scentre Group development director Stewart White said he was "disappointed" by the outcome, saying it prevented "us from managing a key part of our business operations".
"This is to the detriment of customers and our business partners," he said.
"We provided a sensible set of amendments to the bill including to ensure a fairer and more transparent process, and are disappointed these have been ignored.
"We will consider what the passage of the bill means for our car parks, operations and future investment at Westfield West Lakes, Westfield Tea Tree Plaza and Westfield Marion, and provide updates in due course."
