QLDC pays Cougar $2.4 million for parking enforcement

Analysis.

A Crux official information request has exposed the extent of payments to the QLDC's parking contractor Cougar - and the use of a "prohibited overnight bus park" to produce $185,760 of parking fines - with no record of any actual buses using the space nor any charges by QLDC to the bus operators.

Our investigation resulted from a single ticket issued to Crux on the evening of a mayoral debate prior to this year's local body elections. 

Since then many Crux readers have revealed that they also have been fined for parking in the Boundary Street car park mid-evening when the "prohibited area" is reserved for tourist buses. The area is marked only by unlit signs and badly faded, unlit yellow lines.

In the official information responses below we discover that QLDC has paid security company Cougar $2.4 million over the past three years just for their parking enforcement services …. amounting to around a third of parking fines issued (not including unpaid fines).

Crux published details last year of how QLDC makes more - per capita - from issuing parking tickets than any other council.

QLDC's "evidence" of adequate signage in the "prohibited bus zone"

Even during the day the yellow lines are all but invisible.

On the 17 of November Crux submitted the following questions to the QLDC under the Local Government Official Meetings and Information Act (LGOIMA). Here we publish our questions and the answers supplied by the council.

1. How much do tourist buses pay to use the QLDC Boundary Street carpark for the night?

There is currently no charge for overnight bus parking in the Boundary Street carpark.

2. How much revenue has been raised from this source over the past three years?

No revenue has been generated, as overnight bus parking has been free during this period.

3. How many nights have the reserved bus parking night spaces at Boundary Street been empty per year?

(No detailed answer - no records kept.)

In this case, QLDC does not charge for overnight bus parking at the Boundary Street carpark and, as a result, we do not monitor or record usage of the reserved bus parking spaces. Because no monitoring occurs, no records exist that would show how many nights the spaces were empty.

4. How many parking tickets have been issued to drivers using these bus parking spaces over the past three years - and what revenue has been raised?

For the period 16 November 2022 to 16 November 2025, during the restricted hours of 00:00–08:00 and 19:00–23:59, a total of 3,138 parking infringements were issued.

Please note that the system does not allow us to isolate infringements issued solely for parking in the designated bus parking area. We are only able to report on infringements issued during the time the “prohibited parking” restriction is in place (19:00-08:00). This means the total may include some other infringement types that cannot be filtered out.

Based on this dataset, the average number of infringements issued per night is 2.8.

QLDC’s system does not provide a report of revenue specifically associated with these infringements. However, we can advise that the total value of the infringements issued during this period was $185,760, of which $154,260 has been paid.

5. What fees have been paid to your collection agents Cougar over the last three years for Boundary Street work over the last three years?

(No records kept affecting only Boundary Street - but QLDC does detail total fees paid to Cougar.)

Over the past three financial years, Council has paid a total of $2,405,831.83 (excluding GST) to our parking enforcement contractor, Cougar. Please note that this amount represents total QLDC parking services costs across each financial year, including warden patrols, after-hours patrols, callouts, and other parking enforcement activities, and is not limited to Boundary Street enforcement.