Parking fines are among penalties overturned by the Queensland Ombudsman.
Queenslanders have successfully challenged parking fines, toll road fines, pensioner rebate decisions and development fee bills after complaining to a higher authority.
The Queensland Ombudsman's latest annual report provides an insight into the battles ordinary members of the public face when they contest decisions made by councils, state agencies and universities.
In one case outlined in yesterday's report, a woman wrongly issued with a parking fine eventually had her Brisbane City Council ticket waived – but only after seeking higher intervention.
The woman had received a fine for parking on a section of road marked with a no-standing yellow kerb line, but insisted she had in fact complied with a one-hour parking sign at the site.
The report said the council's disputes commissioner rejected her plea after a visit to the location failed to find evidence of the contradictory sign.
The woman then sought help from the Ombudsman, handing over a photo she took when she returned to her vehicle and found the fine showing she was telling the truth about the sign.
The Ombudsman discovered the base of a post was embedded in concrete at the location shown in the photo, which suggested the sign had been removed after the picture was taken.
It turned out that council officers had painted the yellow line on the morning the fine was issued, but the one-hour parking sign wasn't removed until two days later, the report said.
The disputes commissioner subsequently waived the fine and apologised to the woman involved.
In another case documented yesterday, a motorist escaped handing over $280 in fines following her failure to pay motorway tolls.
The woman said she had an account with Queensland Motorways and her e-toll transponder was in the car when she used the toll roads, but her account's auto-top-up feature wasn't working because her credit card had expired and a new one was issued.
She contacted Queensland Motorways in February 2009 to update her details and pay outstanding fines after receiving four infringement notices for non-payment of tolls.
However, the report said she was not told about two other non-payments dating back to December 2008, and six months after updating her details was issued with those infringement notices from the Department of Transport and Main Roads.
The Queensland Ombudsman's report said that as a result of its enquiries, the department's prosecution unit decided to waive the infringement notices totalling $280 because the woman had attempted to comply with other notices of demand before the infringement notices were issued.
The report also outlined the case of a pensioner couple who realised they had been receiving only a part-pensioner discount on their Redland City Council rates for the previous nine years, even though they had been eligible for a full-pension remission since 2001.
The couple complained to the Ombudsman after the council initially refused a request to back-date the difference in the pensioner remission amounts, prompting a change of heart.
The report also documented how $20,000 was wrongly confiscated from a prisoner by Queensland Corrective Services as compensation to an alleged victim of crime.
However, the prisoner's name had been placed on a Department of Justice and Attorney-General spreadsheet in error and he did not owe any debt to any victim of crime. The transfer was later reversed.
The Ombudsman said it had received 953 complaints about Queensland Corrective Services and 190 complaints about the Queensland Parole Board. Grievances included concerns about prisoner safety as part of planned transfers to other jails.
As reported yesterday, the number of people complaining about Queensland public sector bodies surged over the past year.
The Ombudsman, which has the power to investigate complaints involving councils, state government agencies and universities, received 8,717 formal complaints within its responsibility last financial year – up 17 per cent from the year before.
The Ombudsman specifically identified "maladministration" in 33 of the nearly 500 complaints about councils it investigated last financial year.
Formal complaints against universities had risen 132 per cent over the past three years, from 113 such grievances to 262 last financial year.
The Ombudsman reported an 86 per cent rise in complaints about Legal Aid Queensland, the majority of which were about the refusal to grant legal aid.
The report said new legal aid guidelines imposed on January 1, triggered by a reduction in funding following the global financial crisis, restricted eligibility.
