Australia: a nation-state 'Cyclopath'

(Photos: Georgie Abbott, Boca del Rio near Veracruz, Mexico)


Hurtling back into Australia after being in an 'overseas family & work' orbit for nearly six months, I landed in the Downing Centre this week where a NSW District Court Judge dismissed a challenge I made to have my bicycle helmet criminal conviction from last year quashed.

Whilst the judge accepted I genuinely believed that I did the cycling without a helmet for my own safety, she concluded that given the nature of my repeat offending the criminal conviction was justified and consequently would remain.

'No, you shall not go to any Ball in the US.'

'No, you shall not pass Go and waltz off into the sunset with bicycle helmet law no longer a matter for you.'

'No, you don’t need a get-out-of-jail-free card ... yet.' [my italics]

Despite observing the lawyer from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions dance between the notions that 'bicycle helmet crime was a trivial matter' and 'me continually committing bicycle helmet crime was not,' I was still astonished to be left holding the criminal conviction baby.

Really? ... for riding a bicycle without wearing a polystyrene hat? ... when the rest of the world (apart from New Zealand) leaves plastic-fashion-accessory decisions to people riding bicycles or their parents?

As Australia continuously seeks to punish those who attempt to share the roads with oil-driven vehicles and who have the temerity to petition for redress of cycling grievances after two decades of mandatory helmet law, a pattern of bike-bullying has become entrenched and a metamorphosis has taken place - now an ugly 'Cyclopath' has manifested itself to threaten and ridicule citizens who choose to use bicycles for transport.

What does this mean for us on the ground campaigning for cycling equality? Where to now?

When politicians, courts and mainstream media cast you as some crazy curly-haired woman doing some crazy-curly haired things like riding a bicycle or even more crazy and curly-haired, riding a bicycle without a helmet (oh my!) who will listen to you? Who will hear you out?

And while 'they' are 'criminally convicting you' for bicycle helmet crime, who asks 'them' why I was taken by the Police Prosecutor to see the Defence Duty Solicitor in the Local Court last September when I had not sought any legal advice from the court?

Who asks 'them' why somebody else's apprehended violence orders (AVO) were incorrectly attached to the police brief against me?

Who asks 'them' about the incorrect Traffic Record Report submitted at the sentencing part of the Defended Hearing?

Who asks 'them' about the potential prejudice these factors may have contributed to my matter?

I tried to ask the above questions back in September in the Local Court and again this week in the District Court but neither court seemed that interested or even able to help.

In the District Court, the issue of AVO papers was swiftly swept under the curial carpet whilst the traffic record was left hanging in a vaguely kafkaesque fashion - a 'my-word' v 'don't-know-who's-word.'

But where do I start fixing up the traffic record discrepancy? Who is going to listen?

There has been no helpful advice emanating from either court.

So whilst I have your attention and in order to set the 'proverbial' record straight, I would like you to know that I have never been the driver or rider of a 'motor-bike' with or without a helmet, 'alone' or in company. I have never learnt to drive or ride one, nor have I ever possessed a motor-bike licence nor for that matter a motor-bike itself notwithstanding that the offence of riding a motor-bike without a helmet and 'alone' featured on my Traffic Record Report.

Details like these are important as they have a bearing on reputations particularly at the sentencing stage of defended hearings. Riding a motor-bike without a helmet is a matter that will be recorded on your traffic record; riding a bicycle without a helmet is a matter that will not.

Was my traffic record deliberately altered to make the traffic record report appear substantially 'naughtier' than it was?

And which large government-funded body got it so wrong? The police or Roads & Maritime Services (RMS)?

Which one of them will fix it?

It is nearly five years now since I started corresponding with politicians, defending court cases and playing mainstream media’s 'crazy-haired-woman-interview' games relating to Australia’s love affair with mandatory bicycle helmet laws. But the Australian 'cyclopathic' tendency to demonise people who use bicycles has overwhelmed any avenues for review. Furthermore Australian cyclopaths continue to monopolise our transport decisions whilst the wider Australian community turns a blind eye to the nation's intolerant hatred of people who like to use bicycles.

Meanwhile, coming to a courtroom near you next week (that is if you live in Sydney) ... 'Rider ride bicycle without helmet'!

... but maybe just maybe after that Local Court matter, I might try paying the fines ... at the point-of-policeman/policewoman.

Guilty as charged - Australian bicycle helmet criminal

(Parked outside the Downing Centre, Sydney)


Bicycle helmet appeal dismissed yesterday in the New South Wales District Court (Downing Centre, Sydney); conviction not quashed meaning I remain a bicycle helmet criminal.

I feel 'junked' by the entire Australian system and wonder who do I now turn to when politicians, courts and even mainstream media refuse to countenance any petition for a redress of 'bicycle helmet law' grievance?

I feel completely exhausted and am dreading next week's imminent return to the Local Court (Downing Centre) for yet another bicycle helmet matter.

This is one hell of a bad 'Groundhog Day.'

More detail to follow.

Error in history of cycling: Oz bike helmet laws

(Getting around Nagano unencumbered by Australian helmet law)




I want what they have!!!!

And while I continue to uselessly wish for that, I can't help thinking that professional obedience on the part of Australian doctors, lawyers and politicians has kept millions of Australians captive to a ludicrous piece of hysterical legislation.

What hope is there for cycling change in Australia if we remain wedded to mandatory bicycle helmet laws?

We may be cycling around 'in sunshine ... ooh ooh' but there's no 'don't it feel good' about it whatsoever ...

Ladies and gentlemen of Macquarie Street, it's time - strike out regulation 256 poste haste!

Australian Electoral Commission accepts my reasons for not voting as 'VALID & SUFFICIENT'

(Getting around Tokyo unencumbered by Australian helmet law)




Further to the matter of me not voting at the last General Election for all the reasons I outlaid here, I received a letter this week from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) in which it was stated that they (the AEC) considered my reasons to be 'valid and sufficient.'

As a result the AEC proposes 'to take no further action in this matter.'

So if in this instance my reasons for breaking Australian law are considered by a relevant government body to be 'valid and sufficient' why have they not been in 'matters helmet' when to all intents and purposes Australian courts have accepted that my arguments are reasonable and valid and going a long way to explain why I choose to ride a bicycle without wearing a helmet?

If the AEC has the power to judge and decide questions of law occasionally accommodating law-breaking in favour of the law-breaker, why can't Australian courts?

Is it the $$$$$$ involved?

Are the stakes higher?

And/or is it that voting is just an utterly irrelevant, little red-herring game played by the masses to keep us busy and deluded?

So much to sigh about ...

(also published on 'Scone Blog')

Bike helmet law destroys healthy transport

(Anywhere else but Australia - Hakuba, Japan actually)


Less than a week to my District Court matter (March 3, Monday ... eek!) and I can't help but ruminate on how Australian bike helmet laws have played absolutely no part in a sensible transport plan.

In fact if you ask me, our bike helmet laws have been no more than a declaration of bicycle bankruptcy whereby apart from helmet manufacturers and standard keepers no-one in our nation gained any benefit whatsoever.

And as far as I can see, all we really achieved by introducing the world's first bicycle helmet law, was a 'systematic gutting' of Australian cycling as we once knew it ...

... today Down Under, women, children, babies pretty much all gone from our roads on their bicycles ...

... good one, Australia

Oz Federal Election 2013 - my reasons for not voting

(Queen Victoria, outside her building in George Street, Sydney)


Attention Returning Divisional Officer:

Thank you for the letters dated January 7, 2014 and February 10, 2014. Thank you also for giving me this further opportunity to explain my reasons for not voting in the Federal Election last September 7, 2013.

I do apologise for not supplying you with them sooner. I returned from overseas on January 31, 2014 and have been somewhat overwhelmed with matters that have languished during my 4 ½ month time out of Australia, a time that involved both family and work.

In my earlier fax to you, I outlined my grave concerns over the plight of asylum seekers, the continuation of live animal export, the perennial military aggression overseas at the behest of the United States of America, and the lack of leadership in the ‘greatest moral challenge of our time,’ Climate Change.

It occurred to me last September that neither of the major parties, likely to assume a leadership role in the representative democracy of Australia at that time, would be representing me and I was no longer prepared to observe silently these inhumane practices.

Neither of the two candidates in the electorate of Hunter (Mr Joel FitzGibbon MP or Mr Michael Johnson) offered me any confidence that they could or would address my concerns. In fact whilst in government and with regard to Live Animal Export, Mr FitzGibbon had said to me that it was a profitable industry and would continue. I communicated with him that just because something is profitable does not make it right, and that live animal export ought to be halted immediately and permanently.

With regards to climate change and the coal industry that lays siege to my part of the world, my candidates were as one and as united as you would ever see any members of the same party let alone opposing candidates. With both of them and with coal, it will remain business as usual notwithstanding the evidence of dire consequences locally, nationally and globally.

Observing the recent Australian Labour Party’s support of the Liberal National Party’s outrageous plans for asylum seekers, it is clear neither major part shares my belief in the right for all people to seek asylum when they believe they need asylum. The LNP’s new and savage plan to discourage and put peoples’ lives at risk will not be done in my name.

I no longer have confidence in my useful role in Australia’s representative democracy. In my view as it stands today and as it stood last September, Australian-style representative democracy has become irrelevant, in fact no more than just a quirky distraction, somewhat akin to ‘cake and circuses,’ distributed in a bid to prevent us revolting.

In my view, those elected politicians democratically representing us in Canberra do not represent me but rather the interests of Big Business whether they be Big Coal, Big Agriculture, Big Border Security you name it...

I refuse to play this game and I refuse to give my consent to the continued diminishing of hard-earned and hard-fought rights that we somehow did muster over the decades in our national community.

$$$ It is cruel to deny asylum to asylum seekers, and it is cruel to deliberately set out to demonise such stricken folk who have no choice but to leave their lands however and whenever any opportunity presents.

$$$ It is cruel to export animals whilst they are still alive and not able to be protected by our reasonably sound animal welfare laws because they are no longer in our jurisdiction.

$$$ It is cruel to wage wars for corporate interests under the misleading flag of liberation-for-all. It is cruel to deploy drones to terrorise foreign communities again under that misleading flag of liberation-for-all.

$$$ It is cruel to ignore our responsibilities to the rest of the world in reducing our carbon consumption. It is cruel not to commit to an immediate programme to ensure that we do shake our coal addiction.

There were no candidates in my electorate who had the mettle to represent me therefore I was in no position to give my consent to any of them standing for election to represent me in the important business of running Australia ... hence, my informed refusal to vote.

Thank you once again for giving me an opportunity to set out my reasons for not voting, and thank you also for considering them.

Yours sincerely,

Sue Abbott
conscientious voting objector

(also published on 'Scone Blog')

Reason #279 for not wearing a helmet: ITS TOO DARN HOT

(Image: David Abbott, Night on the town, Newcastle, NSW)


So I'm back, it's hot, we still have bicycle helmet laws and that still sucks.

Furthermore my appeal in the District Court will be heard in less than 3 weeks and then after that, in only a matter of days, I'm to front up again for another 'Defended Hearing'!

And on top of all of that Tony Abbott is still Prime Minister, and over-seeing the most shameful of schemes ...

... and the AEC want to know why I didn't vote!

Massive Australian SIGH from me.