Happy Days in Toytown. Tram conductors unbridled by contemporary public health and safety guidelines demonstrating acceptable forms of ticketing in both winter and summer uniforms.
You see folks the criminalisation of society is like global warming… It’s incipient. You don’t notice much until your feet get wet. The latest modelling indicates that those who live along our expensive shoreline will get quite wet, if they live for another fifty years. The same applies to public transport. The point is, you don’t notice the potential for criminalisation until it’s all over you.
I’ll start at the beginning. B.P (Before privatisation), we had conductors. Excuse me, (for those under forty) a conductor was, (and excuse my bias), a generally cheerful person who would help old ladies get off and on the tram, pull the cord, and possessed a large bag, bit like the ones bookies used to have at picnic races, (another explanation pending) and within the bag they dispensed coins and tickets. The tickets were of paper, and you paid the conductor and when asked, showed him/her the ticket to prove that the transaction had been done. Some conductors were a bit snarly whereas other revelled in the public engagement. Our favourite being ‘’ziggy’, the germanic conductor who would amuse us with tricks, yo yo’s plastic spiders and laughter. He was not a paedophile, and mothers and their children thought it was all good fun.
In the 90’s, the trams and train were privatised. The conductors were killed off. Jeff Kennett, ex premier and until recently chairman of “Beyond Blue” decided that conductors were expensive, and incidentally “unionised”. Unfortunately I cannot talk about the crime of flogging off public assets to corporations, that’ll have to wait till the next instalment. But with the sale, the culture on our public transport system changed. It was no more “Public”, but client placed. And I add, somewhere between serfdom and indentured slave. No more helping the old ladies, no conversation with the conductors on finer points of weather, and footy, and literature. You see some of them were quite well read. But I suppose being, functionaries, and bereft of management qualification they had to go.
Similarly trains had Station Masters. A Station Master was up there in our suburb as a lower caste bank manager. He’d have flags, and toot the whistle, and his office, adjoining the ticket booth always smelt of tobacco, and the form guide. Though you can’t smell the form guide it was pungent, like the front page of the ‘Truth’ in it’s presence of just “being there’. They also, like the conductors wore uniforms, Over-worn uniforms which made me think that perhaps that’s why you didn’t see Station Masters uniforms in the op shop. They just “passed them on” until they were all used up,
The Gestapo, precursor to the PSO. In pursuit of an ‘alleged’ invalid ticket holder. An excellent record on law and order, and public safety.
For a couple of decades we had various forms of ticketing, and the standard was the Metcard, a simple paper ticket that gave you all day or a couple of hours. You could buy one on the tram. Then, came MIKEY. Mikey was our very own system, and it was high tech. So incidentally must have been the salaries of it’s designers. It cost billions, and still aint a patch on the Oyster, But we can proudly claim it as our very own. The trams are now, not so cheerful, Apart from the fact that everyone is looking at their phones, the trams are reminiscent of a forties war movie. The new era “ inspectors”, (that’s ‘Commisar’ in Deutsch) board en masse, and very much in the tradition of the ‘ol Gestapo’, say “ ticket inspection”. Armed with scanners, intercom and very shiny badge, (not quite so nice as the border force, but similar) they scan your ticket. All of this is performed in a uniform of sorts with “authorised officer” emblazoned on the back. It must be boring work, but there are rewards, hence the excitement when they find a ticketless, or expired passenger. Then they are commandeered and led off at the next stop, assumedly for interrogation.
Yuendumu down south. Keeping us all SAFE! Three armed PSO’s interrogating ‘alleged’ passenger for being male and poor.
The much more theatrical officers on the train look just like Gestapo, and walk en masse, like a posse or a gang. They are a bit scarier, but not half as scary as the armed paramilitary PSO’s who man the station at twilight, and look like extras from an Arnold Schwarzenegger film. It’s a happy public transport dystopia. It’s all full of fear, and if you step outta line, rather than being asked to get off the tram, or the next station, it’s punishment, and more hefty fines.
If you are well enough off to have a card – credit or debit – that allows you to pay a fine ‘On the Spot’ you only pay around $70, if you are unable to pay on the spot then the cost goes to around $225. And if you can’t pay that… you’ll end up in Chokey. There’s also an absence of laughter. And many new rules that you get fined for. So watch out. Ticketing enforcement is good for the shareholder, and I’d tell you more, but that’s funny business and we know that’s not allowed. And we also know that it must be employing almost, if not more people that used to be occupied by conductors and their ilk. It’s a union of sorts, but happily, union free. And isn’t that the point of it all.