2016-11-23
Ms DUNN (Eastern Metropolitan) — I rise to speak on the Transport (Compliance and Miscellaneous) Amendment (Abolition of the Penalty Fares Scheme) Bill 2016. The failed experiment with penalty fares is part of a broader narrative of the way successive state governments have brutalised Victoria's beloved transport system. For the sake of efficiency dividends, tram conductors were given the sack in 1998. The number of train station attendants was slashed so that passengers could not seek assistance if a ticket machine was not functioning. I feel terribly sorry for those commuters who end up on unstaffed stations and need to go to the toilet, because that is not an option for them because they are locked and not available. The number of ticket inspectors who were then given the martial title of authorised officers was dramatically beefed up.
These changes have been detrimental to the experience of passengers on the public transport system. Instead of being treated like customers that may need assistance, they have been tarnished with assumed guilt until they could prove innocence in the form of a valid ticket.
Since their introduction by the coalition government in 2014 with vigorous support from the then Labor opposition, penalty fares have been a failure on many levels. People that are relatively well off can pay the on-the-spot penalties to avoid receiving an infringement notice, while those without the means to pay the amount of $75 electronically with a credit or debit card do not have that option. There is a perverse incentive to not pay for regular fares and just pay the penalty fare when caught. A 12-month, zone 1 and 2 myki pass is $1521. If a passenger deliberately fare evades, they can be caught and pay the penalty fare up to 20 times before they pay the equivalent of the price of the pass. There is anecdotal evidence of authorised officers coaxing fare evaders to pay the penalty fare without fully explaining their rights of the alternatives available to them. It is easier and cheaper to collect the penalty fares than apply infringement notices, so there has been a revenue incentive for the issuing of penalty fares.
The inequities caused by penalty fares have been compounded by the fact that some passengers find themselves inadvertently fare evading, either due to deliberate shortcomings in the myki system design or frequent failures in its operation, such as the requirement to outlay $6 for the myki card, which is a steep transaction cost to undertake a single trip and baffles many day visitors to Melbourne; the inability to purchase or top up a myki on trains and trams; the inability to purchase or top up a myki at tram stops, except for a few stops in the city and a tiny minority of suburban stops, instead being dependent on a patchy network of retailers; the all too frequent downtime of myki vending machines and myki readers; the slow latency of myki reader and validation infrastructure leading to false touch-ons; and the delay of up to 90 minutes when topping up online.
This state's dysfunctional ticketing system is a legacy of successive Labor and coalition governments. Overlay this with the giant failure of an infrastructure project with a policy of strongarmed enforcement of fare evasion, whether deliberate or unintentional, and a brutish system evolves. As too many passengers in Victoria have found, it is an intimidating task to try and persuade a pack of authorised officers that the myki system failed rather than it being a deliberate act of fare evasion. Pity to the hapless tourist who might make the responsible assumption that a ticket for the tram should be for sale on the tram, as it is in any other country, only to be stood over and gruffly advised that the ticket for the tram must be purchased at a tobacconist or a train station — and even then, only some tobacconists and some train stations. This has tarnished Melbourne's reputation as a friendly destination for visitors.
I would particularly like to call out the merciless nature of the system when it comes to schoolchildren. There have been instances of authorised officers penalising pupils, even those who are in school uniform, for failing to produce a student concession card, even if they had a valid myki. Just think about that. The system was designed to assume a child in a school uniform was deliberately dressing up in a school uniform to pay a concession fare. That is the bizarre length to which the assumption of guilt has been extended, and it is a personal concern to me as a parent of a teenager using a myki — —
Mr Dalidakis — I've seen you dress up in a school uniform to try and get the concession.
Ms DUNN — To pick up the interjection, I reject the notion that I am dressing up in a school uniform to claim the concession for public transport.
Honourable members interjecting.
The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Ramsay) — Order! Ms Patten and Mr Dalidakis, if you want a conversation, go to Sessions Cafe, please. Continue, Ms Dunn.
Ms DUNN — This is needless punishment that can be quite upsetting for schoolchildren and their parents and has targeted children from families with less financial means, signalled by their reliance on the public transport system to get to school.
If there has been one bright side to the penalty fare system, it has been that, in fighting it, the community has been drawn together, and it has spurred much creativity. For example, some passengers decided to get together and form an awareness group about the failures of the myki system and penalty fare issues. To communicate, they have a Facebook group called 'Where are our mates, Melbourne's PT ticket wardens today?'. It has nearly 17 000 members and is one of the most active, if decentralised, public transport advocacy groups in the state.
The principal service of the group is to share advice on which train and tram services passengers may be able to meet and greet authorised officers. They provide photographic evidence to that end. Some of the photos express brilliant composition. Earlier this year there was an exhibition of the best photos submitted at the Old Bar on Johnston Street in Fitzroy. The discussion on the group's page also alerts fellow members to faulty myki infrastructure, late trains, tram derailments and any other woes experienced by commuters and public transport users. There are in-depth deliberations on the rights of those found accidentally fare evading and the best approach to take if accosted by authorised officers. The very fact that public transport users have had to revert to what is effectively a massive support group to cope with the stresses created by myki and the penalty fares system is an indictment of how cruel this system is.
It is not all cheery and informative, though. Over the years there have been countless distressing posts to this Facebook group: photos shared of aggressive authorised officers surrounding foreign tourists, who have burst into tears because they are confused and have been overwhelmed by the situation; photos of individuals taken away in hand ties due to the failure to provide evidence of address for an infringement notice; and individuals pinned to the ground in chokeholds, a horrific site in a harmonious city like Melbourne.
But it gets worse. It took a freedom of information request from the Greens, from my colleague Mr Barber, to reveal a particularly egregious example of these brutal enforcement methods. On 31 July 2013 a girl of 15 years of age was dropped on her head by an authorised officer at Flinders Street train station and then restrained for 81⁄2 minutes. The girl has ongoing back problems after the incident and required ongoing counselling. The actions of the authorised officers were so bad that they were classed by the Ombudsman as degrading treatment and in breach of the human rights charter.
In one case that informed this repeal bill, a homeless woman who lived on a meagre Newstart allowance was fined five times in a year, including while travelling to a soup van for a meal, and was ultimately dragged through a 34-month court process.
This system puts the young, the poor, the homeless and the foreign through hell. It is worth reminding the house of how penalty fares and brutal enforcement methods came into being. It was because the then Labor opposition supported the then coalition government in introducing an on-the-spot penalty fares bill. Labor and the coalition have seen increasing rates of estimated fair evasion since the introduction of myki, and their response has been to blame the hapless victims of the bungled myki system and not fix the myki system itself.
Let us just reflect for a second on the fact that Labor and the coalition have such poor regard for public transport users that they voted for and implemented an enforcement regime that led to breaches of this state's human rights charter, even when most of the cases of fare evasion were because successive governments could not get the ticketing system to work. This enforcement system led to young people suffering serious injuries over a few dollars for a train ticket.
These failings of the penalty fares scheme were called out by my colleague Mr Barber, the Leader of the Greens in this place, when the legislation that created penalty fares was considered in 2013. Mr Barber predicted that public transport passengers would be intimidated by authorised officers into paying $75, even when they were not intentionally fare evading, that the reputation of Victoria's public transport system would be further damaged due to the impression that it was unfriendly and unnecessarily complicated, and that implementation would be thuggish and revert to disproportionate use of violence.
Mr Barber's predictions have, sadly, come to pass. When this bill we have before us today was debated in the lower house, Labor patted itself on the back, claiming it had listened to public transport users and consulted with stakeholders. If Labor had listened to public transport users or advocates at any point in time, they would never have voted to support the penalty fares scheme. It has taken too long for this government to realise its mistake and repeal the penalty fares scheme. Why did it take two years for this government to realise that a system that leads to breaches of the Victorian human rights charter is not fit for purpose?
It is not over yet either. Public transport users must wait another month before the full repeal finally comes into effect on 1 January 2017, and that is assuming it passes this house and receives royal assent. That is a long three years of public transport users being treated like suspects at the scene of a crime.
If the Labor and Liberal on-the-spot penalty fare policy is poor policy that has led to human rights breaches, what is the solution to reducing fare evasion, both deliberate and unintentional? The position of the Victorian Greens is the position we have had all along. The public transport system should be rehumanised. Authorised officers should be turned over to regular station staff duties in areas that are currently unstaffed to assist people with queries, particularly the many issues passengers have with the myki system. There are already significant deterrents to using the public transport system in the form of overcrowded trains and trams, buses that are never on time and services that do not connect.
The Age reported earlier this week that some young adults are unable to find employment because it takes them over 2 hours to get to a job interview or place of work. That is right;— this state's public transport system is so bad that it is disadvantaging the next generation when they are meant to be getting a start to their trade or career, saving to buy a house and contribute to their superannuation. Instead of treating public transport users like criminals first and suckers second, let us treat them like humans with rights first and customers second.
This bill will be supported by the Greens. I commend Labor for finally coming around to the Greens position on penalty fares. Better three years late than never.