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Jasmin Gillespie* was travelling on a tram when a group of ticket inspectors asked to see her myki. The 17-year-old didn’t have a learner’s permit to prove she was a minor.
After a heated conversation, she said she was let off with a warning.
One of the fake public transport posters on display in Melbourne.
“The whole situation seemed unnecessarily intimidating, there was no discretion or empathy, and [the inspectors] presumed I was guilty and lying,” she said. “I was paying my correct fare, and it didn’t even matter.”
The teenager went home angry. That afternoon, she used design software to create a new PTV poster, with a different message: don’t pay for public transport.
Fake public transport posters have appeared around Melbourne after 17-year-old Jasmin Gillespie’s* encounter with ticket inspectors.
“I wanted to see if the best place to hide a subliminally deviant message would be in plain sight,” she said. Fifteen posters were installed at train, tram and bus stops.
Her design attracted thousands of responses after a picture of a poster was shared on Reddit, with many praising her actions.
In the poster she alleges that authorised officers are “violent thugs that target minorities”.
Gillespie has no evidence ticket inspectors were targeting non-white, young, or low-socioeconomic-status travellers.
“I think there’s a lot of pent-up aggression,” Gillespie said.
A spokesperson for Victoria’s Department of Transport told this masthead “we are disappointed with the content in these unauthorised posters and encourage anyone who witnesses vandalism, or defacing of public transport property, to report it immediately to the police or to network staff”.
Australian Rail Tram and Bus Union Victorian branch secretary Vik Sharma said, “baseless attacks on authorised officers highlight a disconnect between a noisy minority and the vast majority of the rail community grateful for the human presence and assistance across the network.”
Sharma also said a vast majority of people are “grateful for the human presence and assistance across the network.
“Authorised Officers do important work supporting commuters every day. Much more than checking tickets, they provide journey planning and way-finding assistance, respond to disruptions and provide a presence that keeps our network safe.”
Gillespie was contacted by a member of Victoria Police in September. “I want to keep something that might be creative from escalating,” the member said in an email. Police told this masthead the investigation into the posters is ongoing.
A screenshot from the Facebook group myki inspector alert space, which warns members about the locations of ticket inspectors.
In 2022, complaints about authorised officers to the public transport ombudsman rose by 55 per cent from the year before. Most of the complaints were about unprofessional, inappropriate, intimidating and discriminatory behaviour.
Gillespie is not alone in her push to promote fare evasion. Myki inspector alert space is a Facebook group with over 70,000 members. Every day, members post the location and images of ticket inspectors. The page serves as a directory of authorised officers, tracking them in an effort to warn other users.
TikTok is rife with tips on how to avoid authorised officers. A tourist in Melbourne posted a video on the platform saying “I don’t understand why some people don’t have to pay when they get on trams”. The video currently has 1.7 million views and thousands of comments, with many users saying fare dodging is common.
Professor Graham Currie and experts at Monash University conducted research, commissioned by PTV, into the psychology behind fare evasion in 2016. Currie says social media has exacerbated fare evasion.
“The human condition is impressive. The way people find their way around the rules,” he said.
His study found more ticket inspections resulted in significantly less fare dodging, as a result, the government increased patrols across the network.
Fare compliance on the metropolitan network hit 96.4 per cent for May 2023 according to the Department of Transport, a slight increase from last year.
The Victorian government said $17.4 million was lost due to fare evasion on the metropolitan network between July 2022 and June this year. Meanwhile, about $15.1 million was received in payments for infringements on the public transport network during the same period. The government said its officers underwent extensive training and did not have infringement KPIs to meet.
Currie said people valued the services they paid for. “[Fare evaders] are not just casually breaking rules. This is real money that everybody else has to pay … to get the systems to work,” he said.
However, Gillespie doesn’t think the current system is working. If she takes a short tram trip, why should she pay the same amount as someone who travels two hours across the state?
“A lot of people agree there is a problem, but no one can really agree on how to solve it” Gillespie said. “[It] certainly seems to have started a conversation.”
*Jasmin Gillespie is a pseudonym.
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