Whilst riding Melbourne’s public transport last week a few things grabbed my attention. The padlocked public lavatory at the Camberwell Railway station for example. Wonderful redbrick structure, wrought iron gate, heavily chained and locked. Lawrence Money recently wrote of the paucity of operating (and unlocked) public lavatories in Melbourne and ended his article with this quote “Of all citizens who responded, only 90 per cent believed it important that the council provides any public toilets at all. Makes you wonder what the other 10 per cent are doing?”
As I was sitting, legs tightly crossed, I distracted myself by examining the plentiful advertising brightening the station. And there among all the banal ads was one by the Public Transport Authority. It offered a major discount if you paid your transit fines on the spot. Pay only $75 on the spot, OR $217 if you chose not to pay on the spot and receive a summons. At the bottom of the ad were words to the effect that “All Major Cards Welcome – VISA, MASTER-CARD”. This puzzled me a little. I thought the message a bit strange. Through the day, and after finding an unlocked and operating public lavatory (My Mum would not allow me to use “that dreadful word ‘Toilet'”) I rode trains trams and buses. On each of these the same advertisement appeared, offering the discount for paying your fine ‘on the spot’.
Now I studied economics at a certain university back in the dim distant past, and I have run my own businesses with varying degrees of success. I do understand that chasing money is a costly business. In fact it was common to offer discounts for ‘on the spot payments’. But this public transport discounted fine seems to have some real problems. Leaving aside the fact that the public transport customer interface is now dominated by law enforcement officers, dressed to make people uncomfortable, profiling customers in the most obvious ways – Oh, I dress conservatively, in a country fashion – checked shirt with collar, often with coat, brown leather shoes, so obviously law abiding that I have never been asked to show my ticket travelling around town – these ads seem to me to be doing little to encourage any sense of loyalty to public transport. Being mightily perplexed I decided to ask my political advisors, Terry Nullius and Laura Norda for their thoughts
Laura Norda: The real problem here, as I see it, is that this is just another way to make the poor even poorer. The people I know who have little money, who have poor cash flows, rarely have the spare $75 either as cash, or credit to pay on the spot. Thus they are being forced to pay and extra 189%, that is an extra $142 over what those who have the wherewithal to pay on the spot. Just another anti social government impost on the poor, accelerating the wealth disparity.
Terry Nullius: What’s the problem? Obey the law and you don’t get fined. Better still drive your car. Then you don’t get dirty, abused or have to mix with the unwashed.