do these 'companies' have any legal right to fine us?

What if you tell them to go shove their 'fine'?

Now that's a very interesting question. I wonder what they would do if one didn't pay.
Probably go the debt collector, "we'll destroy your credit rating for not paying a bill" route.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Ah good ol' PPPs. Where profit goes to a private company, risk goes to the Tax payer and political donations go to the party in goverment.

As Authur Daly used to say, nice little earner that. Like a Macquarie Bank run airport parking.

Anthonyve,

I refuse to own an 'e-tag', as I refuse to pay tolls. Sure I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face in a lot of instances, but if you had the NSW government who actually close surface roads to increase the toll traffic you might understand.

We are getting no more utility when they close the roads to make the same number of lanes there were before. It's a SCAM!

I did consider relenting on my resolution once, but found they charge $80 for the priveledge of using the tolls once in a blue moon, refundable upon death.

Well it will be a cold day in hell when I give a toll company an $80 interest free loan. Apparently they have millions in the bank earning interest with this scam.

They might have had me if I had to outlay nothing and paid as I go like Richard Branson lets me. One can normally only swim against the tide for so long, but my resolve is strengthened by knowing that even though a vote is meaningless, and the world is corrupt, I can still deny a bunch of c%nts $80.

The thread asks a question about governments.
I think it highlights us.
We refuse to even consider each issue and act a government confronts has at least two sides.
For every happy out come, in our opinion, some one is unhappy.
It will always be so.
If we personally, consider all sides of any issue, and task ourselves as governments do, with getting it right.
We will soon see our self assurance , we know better, turn to mud.

Dear Belly,

"We will soon see our self assurance , we know better, turn to mud."

Isn't this a wonderful and excellent result then?

As you mentioned, measuring actions by material outcome is bound to create one conflict or another.

If government does things, if government makes the choices, then we may like or hate the result, but we will not benefit from it, not from a spiritual perspective anyway: the actions of others teach us nothing.

We cannot gain a lasting benefit from others' decisions and actions, but if we act by free choice based on our own 'I know better' and then fail to get it right, turning our self assurance into mud, then we have gained in humility - which is far more precious than good roads or any other material gain, all temporary.

There are two aspects to this.

Is it "right" for a government to allow private enterprise to cash in on a service - in this case, roads - that could arguably be provided as a service to their public? And second, should those companies then be allowed to gouge that public, as if there was a contract freely entered into, that had been violated.

The first comes down to "what do we expect from our taxes". And whether we like it or not, such services as roads, public transport, garbage collection etc. have taken a lower priority to their concept of social "responsibility" - with hundreds of millions sunk into "community sports", "culture and heritage" etc. feel-good exercises. Personally, I'd prefer them to build roads with my money.

The second seems to come down to individual experiences.

Mine is that the Sydney system works incredibly (as in, sometimes I can't believe it myself) well. When I forgot to transfer my tag to a hire car while my own was being serviced, all I got was a letter that allowed me to allocate the charge to my account. Penalty? An "admin fee" of $1 per incident. And when the tag hasn't worked, but instead sets off the camera, what do I get? Nothing. They (presumably) check the numberplate against the valid account, and make the charge against it. Penalty? None.

The broader view is that we shouldn't have to negotiate with a private company for a "public" service. The narrow view is that if they all worked as well as my tag provider, I'd have little to complain about.