1,000 signatures reached
To: Australian National University
Park it! Freeze the parking rates at ANU
We call on the University to:
- Reverse the huge fee-hikes to parking
- Engage in community consultation for future fee hikes
- All further benchmarking should strongly consider the current rates and the needs of ANU staff, students and community members
Why is this important?
In the OnCampus email on Tuesday 1 October, ANU announced that it was raising its parking rates without any consultation with students and staff.
These rates are being raised by at least 177% for surface parking permits.
- Student surface permits for off-campus students are going from 512.69 in 2024 to 1,416.20 in 2025
- Student resident permits are raised from 512.69 for several parking stations to 1,416.20.
- Staff permits are going from to 1,025.39 to 2,839.70
These increases will make the parking on campus entirely unaffordable for huge groups of students and staff.
They will particularly impact vulnerable groups on campus, such as disabled people, parents and carers, and people from regional and rural areas, who are more likely to rely on cars and therefore need parking on campus. This potentially breaches ANU’s ‘’Procedure: Prevention of discrimination, harassment and bullying’ in relation to provisions relating to prevention of indirect discrimination.
For students who live on campus, many face walks of over forty minutes to the closest shopping centre and cannot get to work without a car. Many students from interstate cannot visit home without a car. Off-campus students and staff may not have access to any viable public transport options. While we embrace better public transport options, particularly on-campus, many ANU community members do not have a choice and should not have to pay for it with these eye-watering prices. ANU already has the lowest proportion of disadvantaged students across the country and increasing the price of things like parking actively work against making the university more accessible to people from those backgrounds.
We note that the benchmarking process the ANU undertook compared ACT government parking spots, including at the Parliamentary triangle. These communities are not the same as the ANU, particularly ANU students. It is important that the ANU understands that benchmarking rates against ACT government rates will result in harm to the ANU community when it results in massive hikes.