The Revenue Officeâs response leaves a lot to be desired. It seems to be a standard patronising bureaucratic response, that: it has to be the usersâ fault.
The notice is patently not clear enough or up to community expectations if so many people, including the Police, saw it as a scam.
Case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. The NSW Police shouldnât have commented on the correspondence unless they checked the details with the issuing party.
It is always best to contact the agency/organisation who allegedly sent the letter/email rather than a second party like the police. If the persons involved had contacted the NSW State Recovery Office they would have quickly realised it wasnât a scam. They would have also been aware of the outstanding fines they owed, therefore it would have not been surprise to receive the cancellation notice.
I wonder if the issued party was trying to find a new way to avoid paying the fines and having their registration/licence uncancelledâŠclaiming it was a scam.
Unfortunately, we are being trained to be extremely cautious with everything we receive that is unsolicited - so there is no surprise that this resulted in confusion.
I received an email yesterday from a recruiter that I have dealt with in the past, telling me that my information was stored by PageUp and I would need to change my password⊠âclick hereâ.
I responded by suggesting that they review how they notify people and the information they provide, because I have no way of knowing whether the email was actually from its claimed source and most definitely do not click on links in unsolicited communications.
The Police (in their revenue raising capacity) and the revenue office are indeed scams - itâs just that they are government sanctioned scams âŠ
I disagree if the public which in the past has included me wish to speed or use their mobile whilst driving or otherwise break the law then the police do a great community service in issuing penalties. I call it a tax on the law breakers, and I am fully aware that if no-one broke the law and therefore there were no penalties being paid by law breakers then I would have to pay more state taxes to make up the shortfall in revenue so I am for one happy that they hit speeders and other recalcitrant road users hardâŠ
And comparing the abhorrent road toll from the 1970âs to today there is no doubt that speeding and other dangerous road use does kill.
Which is precisely why I qualified my statement by saying âin their revenue raising capacityâ. Being âagainst the lawâ does not automatically mean an action is unsafe and a penalty is justified, but of course there are plenty of examples where this is the case. Unfortunately over-simplifying the issues has led to misunderstanding that seems often blindly followed and the police are given little or no leeway in the discretion they can show.
This is where we will continue to disagree here as i say if the penalty is required then I am happy for the police to apply it unilaterally without discretion as it means the states coffers stay full without me having to top them up.
And if members of the public choses to run the risk it is a tax on their activities and if I chose not to run the risk then I save paying that extra tax, with the happy benefit of making the roads safer for everyone but most importantly my family.
If the community collectively thought the law was wrong and their were penalties being applied unfairly or for unjustified reasons, political pressure at the ballot box would rise to have âbadâ laws amended or reminded but collectively the silent majority is happy and the whinge about revenue raising comes from the involuntary âroad-penalty-taxâ taxpayers.
Iâd like to agree with you, but then weâd both be wrong 
Counterpoint is that each of us HAS to vote for a basket of policies, not just a policy, although there are single policy voters. Most of us will endure rubbish policy for something or other if we feel other policies outweigh it. Viewing a system as either black or white when it is really a spectrum of colour is where it fails the pub tests, especially when one believes an election is the appropriate remedy to every local law and its sometimes overzealous enforcement and penalties. I reference far more than road rules.
It has always been interesting that the road safety âexpertsâ consider every vehicle is going to crash and make rules with penalties accordingly. Reality is most crashes are people driving well out of the envelope of safety, falling asleep, DUI, and so on, not those being gouged for a few kph over on a dual carriageway.
Disclaimer: I have not had a moving violation in 40 years so you cannot count me as a whinging road rules scoff-law.
Yes - it seems like the rule of the lowest common denominator, that everyone has the ârightâ to be âprotectedâ by a law that applies unilaterally across all possible contexts, Tumut to Tennant Creek. Where responsibility is taken from the individual and âthey must make it safe for us allâ regardless of reality, ignoring the concept that given the worst case scenario we are unsafe at any speed (or whatever). âSpeedingâ is a hot topic in the NT, where laws have been completely political and nothing to do with âlocal conditionsâ - our big killers some of the more obvious and less racially acceptable to identify because the realities of living here arenât understood by most âsouthernersâ âŠ
My record is not so clean - for the record - Iâve âbeen doneâ for 10 over and 15 over in the last 40 years or so, a couple of times - more recently Iâve ridden in places in this country (before the faux-communists took back âpowerâ and wanted to sock-it to the capitalists) where there was no speed limit, and slowed down to overtake vehicles or when vehicles were oncoming, because that made sense to me as (what I consider to be) a responsible rider no to place others at more risk than they already were by being on the road in the first place âŠ
Itâs a pity that none of the ways of checking if the letter is legitimately a scam or not wonât actually confirm anything. Checking âwebsitesâ shown on the paper, calling the number, âit looks correctâ are exactly what the scammers are hoping youâll do. Scams like this are very well constructed and there are really very few things you can do apart from attend the office physically and get them to confirm the penalty notice.
Often one can scan/photo the questionable âpaperâ and email it directly to the council/enforcement agency for verification. Of course one should not use any address/number from the possible scam itself
I suspect that the difference in attitudes here is at least partly because @draughtrider sees police stationed so as to catch as many âroad law violatorsâ as possible rather than being placed to discourage bad or unsafe driving in known danger spots.
As for the suggestion that voters support what their governments do, that is hilarious. We simply have a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee - or as Douglas Adams put it, the better lizard. There are plenty of policies supported by both major parties that are not at all supported by the public - but we donât really get a say.
If we placed the same emphasis on actually fixing black spots as is placed on âpolicingâ of roads and writing tickets, we would all be much safer.
Indeed. I miss getting out of second gear 130 km/h is way too slow on dead straight open road with excellent visibility âŠ
/sigh. Thereâs always one in the crowdâŠ
I donât care what the policeâs motives are, they fact they book the speedsters means that the state coffers are full and therefore they tax me less as a result with the happy side benefit that the road toll is reduced as well.
Whereas i do agree that elections are always a faustian choice between a âdoucheâ and a âshite sandwichâ but if there were easy votes in campaigning on less speed enforcement one of the two political parties would campaign on that policy, but the reality is the silent majority are not unhappy with the current settings.
So what youâre saying is that youâre comfortable with the lies that are told about speed traps being to âprevent accidentsâ, and happy to see them as a form of taxation?
I have this âthingâ about truth in advertising, which includes government programs. Successive governments have loudly proclaimed that the policing of roads is not a revenue-raiser, but the manner in which it is implemented tells a different story.
No that is what you are saying.
I like many australians are satisfied with the active enforcement of speeders and others who disregard the road rules as it makes the roads safer for everyone and a happy by-product is we all pay less in taxes as the ones that choses to disregard the laws are actively and vigorously policed and they top up the states revenue with their fines.
I say if you truely believe your personal road safety belief that âspeed doesnât killâ then knock yourself out, go for it because then you can contribute more to the state revenues I just hope you donât take someone else out on the way.
The active enforcement of road rules does indeed save lives when it is applied to accident âhot spotsâ. When speed traps are set on long straight stretches of divided road with a downhill incline, then it is not intended to or in fact making roads safer.
I didnât say that or anything like it. I am well aware of the statistics, and suggest that drivers should be tested for tiredness as well as alcohol - but that would clearly be âa bridge too farâ politically. As would the idea of regularly re-testing drivers, and even putting all those revenues from traffic tickets into sensible ways of making roads better and safer.
I look forward to the days when driving will be illegal, and we can rely upon well-designed self-driving cars to protect everyone on the roadsâŠ
