Re: Metcard Adventures (Was: [Melb] Fare evasion)

[Paul Dwerryhouse <paul+usenet@dwerryhouse.com.au>]

"Daniel Bowen" <dbowen@custard.REMOVE.net.au> writes:

>I'm guessing that Pepsi have an exclusive contract with the station
>operators. 

This is something that really annoys me about the privatised system -
giving exclusive contracts to certain commercial enterprises. While softdrink
is obviously at the minor end of the scale, it becomes more serious when
you look at News Ltd being allowed to distribute their free papers in stations
to the exclusion of Fairfax.

When I was working in a government funded institution and had a reasonable
amount of purchasing power (lets say to the value of a few hundred thousand
dollars a year), I could have been personally liable for fines even if I
wasn't "seen to be neutral" in terms of purchasing equipment from vendors
(irrespective of whether I really was or not).

And now formerly public assets are being used to give unfair advantages to
one or two companies. Whatever happened to the "level playing field"?


-- 
Paul Dwerryhouse (paul@dwerryhouse.com.au)
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.    <---- current location
Melbourne, Australia.