Re: [VIC] PA Announcements at Hillside stations.

["Dave Proctor" <daproc@spambait.ozemail.com.au>]

"Vaughan Williams" <ender2000@my-deja.com> wrote in message
8gg1b5$s31$1@nnrp1.deja.com">news:8gg1b5$s31$1@nnrp1.deja.com...

> The answer is that there is no good reason.
> If the ticket is validated once, ie, has a printed date on the back,
> there is no good reason why the passenger should have to continually re-
> validate it for the convenience of the bean counters running the system.
>
> Also, on my reading of the Transport Act, fining people for not re-
> validating an already valid ticket is dubious. As far as I can tell, if
> its been validated once, its valid. I'm aware of at least one person
> who argued this before a magistrate and had the fine thrown out of
> court.
>
> Can anyone point me to any legislation or case law on this? And I don't
> mean XSide trains policy booklets or anything told to the CSE's in
> training. I'm looking for any law on the subject.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_reg/tarfr1994493/s206.html

This could be argued in two ways. The first way (which is what you guys
would like) is that the phrase "a ticket which requires machine validation"
is an unvalidated ticket, i.e. does not have a date on it. This would
therefore mean that an already validated ticket does not require further
validation.

The second way (which is the way the companies would like) is that "a ticket
which requires machine validation" means any Metcard, and the section
clearly states that you then need to validate it EVERY time.

What we need is for a magistrate to go with the second version, so that it
can go to the County Court on appeal. Once a judge makes a decision, it will
be binding on all magistrates (until they change the wording), otherwise,
magistrates will be free to do what they like.

Dave