Brisbane

he could easily have at least gone close to the white line on the left

Even worse than going into the parking lane entirely. Not only does this put you in the door zone of all those parked cars you're passing, it also encourages dangerous overtakes. To overtake a cyclist safely, you need to be able to safely go into the next lane. Whether that's another lane in the same direction, or an oncoming traffic lane. Because a standard 3.5 m lane, with a cyclist riding 30 cm from the left edge, is going to put the cyclist's right handlebar at least 0.7 m into the lane (my smallest bike has 42 cm handlebars—any mountain bike or casual city bike is going to be bigger, and frankly so are most racing road bikes—so I've rounded down here). Add one metre to overtake (if the speed limit is 60 km/h or less), and that means the leftmost edge of a car's wing mirror needs to be at least 1.7 metres away from the left edge of the lane. Add the width of a small car (remembering to include the mirrors—the width you usually find on a basic spec sheet ignores them) at 1.9 m, and you're now 10 cm into the oncoming traffic lane. And that's using the very best case scenario. Talk about larger cars, non-racing bikes, and allow for a little wiggle room because no cyclist is riding a dead straight line, and neither is the driver, and you realistically need to be going half a metre or more into the oncoming lane.

By riding on the left edge, what actually ends up happening is a cyclist is encouraging drivers to ignore all of that, and to just try to "squeeze past". Forget that 1 metre minimum passing distance, and you can probably fit just fine without going into the other lane. But doing that means you're now endangering the cyclist's life. Inexperienced cyclists often do this, because they think they're being courteous. But the smart, safe thing to do, is to take the centre of the lane. Because if a car has to go into the next lane to pass you safely anyway, might as well make it very clear to them that "hey, you have to go all the way into the next lane to overtake me: no overtaking if there's oncoming traffic." In Australia we usually call this "taking the lane". Overseas some people also call it "riding in the primary position".

But I reiterate: contact your state MP and councillors. Do it today, while it's fresh in your mind. Make sure they know that even as a driver, you want to see them ban parking in bike lanes (or ban designating something a "bike lane" if parking is going to be allowed there) and you want more separated cycling infrastructure. That's what we really need to get rid of the need for this entire conversation.