Airport gouging and shock jocks

YOU CAN see it any day at Canberra Airport – a great contest between the owners who want to gouge as much as they can get away with from anyone coming near the place and those determined not to pay one cent more than they absolutely must.

Under the guise of “security’ the airport refuses to allow people to wait patiently in their cars to pick up passengers at a reasonable distance from baggage pickup, and where passengers can sit and wait under cover if their lift is running late.

Instead, those picking-up are directed to a “free” pick up area 300 metres from baggage pickup — outside with no cover. And there is a trick. The “free” pick-up area is within the paid carpark and if you stay for just a minute over, your “free” ticket morphs into a “you-must-pay” ticket and it will not allow you out of the carpark without taking it to a pay machine and paying at least $1.50.

If your passenger is running late it can cost a lot more.

Ten minutes is simply not enough to get out of the car and go to the baggage pick-up to see if your passenger has arrived.

This has caused some bizarre behaviour. People picking up do endless laps of honour – out after nine minutes and back in. Others drive around outside the carpark as slowly as they can in a laps between roundabouts, much to the fury of other airport users who want to get in or out as quickly as possible – especially taxis.

Others get their passengers to wait for them – outside in Canberra’s winter. They are presumably told to ring on arrival, get your baggage and walk to the “free” pick up place and too bad if it is raining or your wait is a long one and you want to sit down.

Of course, given this incoming passengers are going to plead with their lifts to be at the airport waiting. Given a few airline delays and you have a recipe for more parking revenue for the airport. It all adds up, that is why it is made a difficult as possible to do a free pick-up.

Added to this, the airport charges taxis a fee for picking up passengers – just to make sure all escape routes are shut off.

In Brisbane, it is worse. Canberra’s parking fees are merely high. Brisbane’s short-term parking fees verge on extortion: $17 if you stay over an hour.

On the side of the freeway about a kilometre outside Brisbane Airport, two dozen cars or more line up awaiting the mobile phone call to guide them in to the airport so they can pick up without paying.

Any closer than a kilometer and you are greeted with flashing signs saying – “No stopping. Fines apply.”

So the privatisation of Australia’s airports has led to the demise of what was once a joyous social occasion – the airport greeting in the terminal.

It really is a bit much. After all, the airport has already indirectly charged every passenger who lands, through the fees they charge the airlines which pass them on.

How about it Canberra Airport? Amid all of that expensive concrete and steel going up on the site, a shelter for arriving passengers would not be too much. And how about extending those free 10 minutes to half an hour. Even the profit-obsessed Coles in Manuka allows for that.

DOT DOT DOT

I had the excruciatingly unpleasant experience one morning this week of being forced to listen to 2GB’s talkback radio for more than an hour.

I was in the garage using a power saw – my wife won’t let me use it in the lounge room – to craft a frame to transport an oil painting. Next door a tradesman had left his van with all doors open and the radio blaring. There was no escape. Our garage door had to be open because of the dust and the frame had to be built that day.

Trust me, the noise of a power saw without headphones is music compared to the rantings on morning 2GB.

To adapt an old quote: all that is necessary for racist, prejudiced and exaggerated commentary to get national public airing is for talkbacks host to say nothing – or just a knowing “hhmmmm”.

A batch of comments on refugees puzzled me. The comments ran the line that it was shocking that the Government would spend money on foreign boat people – for plasma TVs, private education, luxury housing and the like – ahead of spending money on dinky-di Australians (usually pronounced Austrayans on morning talkback).

But there is a paradox of inconsistency here. Barnardos Australia, which helps children in stressed Australian families, finds it very difficult to raise money. Often the children’s parents abuse drugs or alcohol or are violent to their children.

It is a hard message to sell – no matter how innocent the children, some potential donors feel that the failings of the parents make their children somehow less deserving than the equally innocent children whose misfortune is to be born in poverty overseas. People like someone to blame.

Maybe the consistency is cold-heartedness.

DOT DOT DOT

A little follow up to the snippets on tax last week. I am reading a book by Dan Ariely – “The (Honest) Truth About Honesty”.

Ariely suggests that a lot of dishonesty is perpetrated by essentially good people. He cites the case of a boy suspended from school for stealing another student’s pencil. The father is furious and grounds the boy for a week and tells the boy his mother will be appalled. The father then says to the boy: “I cannot understand it. Why didn’t you tell me you needed a pencil? I can get as many pencils as you like from my work.”

It is a comparative dishonesty based upon what people can live with within themselves.

Ariely has done some experiments suggesting that if people are reminded of their ethical obligations immediately before acting, they are less likely to fudge.

He had copious examples of people behaving more honestly if propmpted by ethical standards before acting out the experiment.

He thought the Internal Revenue Service in the US, the equivalent to our Tax Office, might be interested. He suggested that in IRS tax returns a signature agreeing to a statement of intention to act honestly should come at the top of the tax return, not the bottom. By the time the taxpayer had got to the bottom of the return, he said, it was too late. All the fudging – exaggerating expenses etc — had already been done and had been self-justified.

He said that even if there were a legal requirement of a signature to be placed AFTER the data entry, it could be done in addition to the one at the top.

He was ignored.
CRISPIN HULL
The article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 07 July 2012.