lifestyle

'I got a $294 parking fine and yet Auburn's Deputy Mayor was only fined $220 for shutting down a street.'

Yesterday I got a parking fine.

It was entirely my fault. I got home late at night, all the car parks were taken, so I parked my car half in a carpark space and half out of it.

When I went to move my car early the next morning, I found a ticket with a fine for $294.

So yesterday, I was kicking myself. And every time I walk past the fridge where I’ve pinned it up, I kick myself a little bit more. By this morning, I had moved to the next stage of the emotional spectrum of getting a parking fine: Acceptance.

That was until I read the paper this morning and found out that Salim Mehajer, Auburn’s Deputy Mayor, was fined $220 for BLOCKING AN ENTIRE STREET while filming his wedding on Saturday.

$220 for blocking a street with a fleet of stretch limousines, a cavalcade of luxury cars including a Ferrari and several Lamborghinis, a squad of motorbikes and a posse of police.

What fresh hell is this?

I’ve been charged $294 for having my back wheels and boot hanging over what appears to be a quite arbitrary line.

So you can visualise it, let me tell you a little bit about my car. I drive a 1996 Mazda 121. It is one of those bubble cars that hairdressers drove in the mid-90s.

My car is so small that every time you open the car door, you expect 12 clowns to climb out. It has a ding in the side where it lost a battle with a shopping trolley (and it wasn’t even a full size trolley. It was one of those urban supermarket trolleys that fits nothing in it except a box of crackers and a roll-on deodorant.)

ADVERTISEMENT

Most contemporary prams are bigger than my car. So you can imagine my distress that having HALF my car nudging into a no-parking zone in the suburbs in the middle of the night has put me almost $300 in the hole, when blocking an entire street on a Saturday with an extraordinary number of fancy cars and motorbikes only cost $220.

I was only imitating the best.

It would have been cheaper for me to park my car in the middle of the street in Lidcombe in the middle of the day. And probably less intrusive, because it really doesn’t take up much room and if anyone actually needed to move it, they could just pick it up and leave it on the footpath (where kids’ pedal cars could drive right over it).

I’m happy for the Deputy Mayor and his partner. Sounds like their wedding was a blast.

But I’m just hoping that when they get around to paying for their wedding, I might be able to just slip my parking fine into their TO BE PAID pile.

Surely that’s only fair?

Read more on the “wedding of the century”: 

The couple whose wedding shut down Sydney have released a new video.

In defence of the massive, over-the-top wedding.

The wedding everyone is talking about also had an amazing wedding video

Were there any expenses at the Deputy Mayor of Auburn’s wedding that you disagreed with?