Victorians caught without a myki cop one of the highest fines for fare evasion in the world, which social welfare groups say punishes poor and vulnerable people who have often made a genuine mistake.
Fines for failing to produce a valid ticket or proof of concession entitlement increased by $8 on July 1 to $296. In comparison, the fare evasion penalty in Western Australia is $100, while in London it’s equivalent to $95 and in Paris $125. In Singapore, it’s just $55.
And if you don’t pay your fine in time in Victoria, that cost can surge to more than $500 in just a couple of months.
An analysis by The Sunday Age of major transit systems globally identified just one jurisdiction that issued higher fines for fare evasion: Queensland at $322.
NSW’s fare evasion fines are $200 and can be reduced to $100 for people who receive Centrelink payments, while Victoria only reduces fines for people under 18 ($99).
Legal and welfare advocates are calling for Victoria to overhaul its fine system to recognise the disproportionate impact such large penalties have on people on low incomes or who are experiencing poverty.
“An almost $300 fine has a massive impact,” said Shifrah Blustein, managing lawyer at Inner Melbourne Community Legal.
“We see people having to choose between paying their fine or paying rent or buying medicine.”
Department of Transport and Planning issues about 90,000 fare evasion fines a year. Late fees can see a $296 penalty jump to $469 after seven weeks – and $533 after 10 weeks.
Blustein said that unlike driving infringements, fare evasion fines had no public safety benefit and were purely aimed at protecting revenue, making them “patently excessive”.
“The people who can pay up-front, they just pay: it makes no real difference to them. The people who can’t pay, it can have devastating, literally life-changing consequences,” Blustein said.
Attia Rana received a fine in the mail from the Department of Transport and Planing after neglecting to touch-on when she boarded a train at Brunswick station last September.
The mother-of-three said she could not afford to pay the $288 penalty when it first arrived, and so it quickly ballooned with late fees to $521.60 – almost a week’s salary.
“Even when I received the first notice, I was thinking, ‘OK this is too much – I’ll have to plan for how to pay for this’,” Rana said of the fine, which arrived in October.
Extract from The Age
