The Victorian Government is Evil. Here is why.Justin, A colleague of mine at this job I am currently on is a social activist at heart. He says his name is derived from a Latin word for just or justice.
In this spirit he instigated a ticket sharing scheme in Melbourne recently that has had some interesting results. He proposed that when people get off public transport they hand their tickets to people about to get on.
Melbourne public transport tickets are time based - usually daily or for 2 hours, which means you can take several trips on one ticket. He wrote to one of the local newspapers suggesting that people share their tickets. A kind of social recycling if you want. After all, the ticket has been purchased and the seat accounted for.
After an initial wave of supporters writing back to the paper saying they were getting on board and that this was a good idea the tide turned. Supporting letters died away and a tirade of insults and abuse was vented towards him.
People accused him of stealing and inciting others to steal One argument was that if you share a ticket you are stealing from the other commuters. As usual the most vitriolic had little logic or substance to their arguments.
Justin noticed a trend in some of the letters and suspected that the anti sharing campaign was being run by staff at one of the public transport organisations (some of Melbourne's transport infrastructure is run by the government and some if privately owned.)
He took the step of calling the public transports call centre and asking if it was illegal to share tickets. The initial answer was that no it was fine to share tickets. He called a few of the other companies and ended up getting a mixed response; some saying sharing was okay and others saying no to sharing. (Just say no)
His assumption was that no-one had actually though through the policy, or that the relevant policy had become dusty and unread in some folder somewhere in some filing cabinet from 1983. And that something would be done...
And apparently something has been done. Just before Christmas when no-one is reading the news the state government releases this news.
$500 ticket fines under new transport laws by Tanya Giles
COMMUTERS who give away their train, tram and bus tickets to other passengers face $524 fines under harsh new laws. The crackdown is aimed at kind-hearted commuters who hand their used - but still valid - tickets to strangers because they no longer need them. Ticket inspectors will pounce on commuters giving away tickets under the State Government's tough new anti-fare-evasion regime. Fines of up to $524 will be imposed for all ticket offences - up from the $150 for a first offence under the current system.
Fines for sharing tickets has angered the Public Transport Users Association. Hundreds of commuters shared their tickets with friends or family each year, PTUA president David Bowen said. Some businesses also have ticket pools in which employees can use validated tickets for transport around the city to save money. "It seems a bit unreasonable to make it illegal, given that it is one person doing another person a good turn," Mr Bowen said.
Read the whole article here
What can you do? How can you protest? How can we make the Victorian Government see that sharing is good and not evil. To me there are two obvious avenues:
- A Fight Club style homework assignment that subverts the system
- Or work within the system and contact the lobby group PTUA and express your rage.
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