Moving to Melbourne to study was part of Chinese student Alaia Zhao’s lifelong dream of becoming a marketer. She looked forward to the freedom of exploring a new city while she gained new skills.

Zhao had only been in Melbourne a few weeks when she jumped on a tram to the City Square last August and found herself face-to-face with an authorised public transport officer who asked to inspect her Myki card.

Fumbling through her bag to look for her card, Zhao recalls feeling confused as it was her first time talking to an authorised officer.

“She look[ed] so serious,” Zhao says. She recalls the officer speaking to her in an “austere” tone, before switching to a “gentle” tone when a white girl behind her voluntarily handed over her Myki.

Zhao claims the officer gestured towards her and said to the white girl: “No, I don’t need to check yours, just hers.” As she remembers it, the only tickets the officer asked to see were those of the Asian women in the tram.

Zhao remembers feeling “uncomfortable” and “scared”, though she knew then she had not committed any crime.

“I think it’s kind of racist because she didn’t check other people, just the Asian people,” she says.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, but she treated me so differently.”

Zhao didn’t lodge a complaint. She was disoriented and didn’t note the officer’s details.

And she was worried about the consequences. “[International students] don’t know the laws and authorities [around public transport] clearly”, and fear their student visas will be revoked if they are found to be non-compliant, Zhao says.

According to lawyers, social media reports and data from the Public Transport Ombudsman, experiences like Zhao’s – where passengers feel they were dealt with inappropriately, intimidated or discriminated against – are not unusual. Her reluctance and fears around reporting the incident are also widely shared.

In some instances, lawyers and students say the encounters have the hallmarks of racial profiling – when enforcement officers such as police or ticket inspectors target a person due to their race.

These hallmarks include stopping, detaining, questioning, or searching a person due to their colour or ethnic heritage, according to the Police Accountability Project, a public-interest project run by lawyers from the Inner Melbourne Community Legal Centre (formerly known as the Flemington & Kensington Community Legal Centre).

The project describes it as a “form of discrimination which violates basic human rights”, and also argues it contributes to “inefficient policing”, as it is ineffective in lowering crime rates.

Youthlaw principal lawyer James Tresise, who has worked with international students and in fines legislation for eight years, says he has heard about negative interactions with ticket inspectors “time and time again.

“It’s usually in circumstances where they just don’t understand what’s going on or have struggled to explain to an authorised officer why they don’t have the right Myki, or a misunderstanding about what concession they’re entitled to, or something as simple as that,” he says.

It is difficult to prove such experiences are racially motivated, he says.

Ticketing infringements are issued based on the passenger’s fare compliance – that is, whether they are holding a valid ticket. The process by which passengers are selected for a ticket check, where these are random and not systematic across a whole carriage, for instance, is not publicly available.

“If [authorised officers believe] international students are more likely to be non-compliant, at least initially, is there a better case for education and compliance [rather] than fining, would be my take,” says Tresise.

Responding to questions from The Citizen about officers’ protocols and routines for checking fares, a spokesperson for the Department of Transport and Planning declined to answer on the grounds operational details were confidential, adding that there were more than 650 authorised officers working across the network.

Questioned about overseas students’ allegations of being targeted, they said: “We have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to racism on our public transport network and we encourage passengers to report illegal and inappropriate behaviour.

“If an [authorised officer] believes that an offence has occurred, they are obliged to report the passenger to the Department of Transport and Planning.”

“To do this, [authorised officers] can ask the passenger for their name and address, and evidence which confirms their identity. [Authorised officers] also have the discretion to not complete a report if they believe the passenger was experiencing special or exceptional circumstances.”

Responding to a subsequent inquiry, another spokesperson said enforcement operations have a “particular focus on deliberate and recidivist fare evasion and more systematic discretion and use of official warnings in cases of inadvertent non-compliance”.

The Public Transport Ombudsman says the majority of complaints it receives relate to the conduct of individual authorised officers. Last year, the office received 150 complaints about authorised officers, with 93 per cent describing behaviours that were “perceived as unprofessional, inappropriate, intimidating and/or discriminatory” according to its 2023 annual report.

It is unclear how many cases included allegations of racism or racial profiling. The Citizen has sought further information from the ombudsman.

The report detailed one case study it had conciliated which included an allegation of racial vilification.

A complainant, Jason, alleged that an authorised officer had stopped him “forcefully by putting a hand on his chest and acted in an aggressive, threatening, and intimidating manner”.

The complainant said this interaction triggered a panic attack and caused difficulty in speaking. In response, the officer made a “taunting comment”, which Jason alleged was “racially motivated”.

Jason had first filed a complaint to Public Transport Victoria, which referred the case to Metro Trains. Unsatisfied with the train operator’s rejection of his claims, he contacted a community legal centre which referred him to the ombudsman.

Online forums on Reddit and private Facebook groups such as Myki inspector alert list hundreds of accounts of experiences like Zhao’s, alleging officers’ apparent targeting and intimidation of international students.

The Citizen initiated a crowdsourced survey into the issue in late 2023, and lodged a Freedom of Information (FOI) inquiry with the Department of Transport and Planning.

The survey yielded numerous first-person stories of harassment and claims of disproportionate profiling students of colour.

Distributed via student associations, the survey asked respondents to identify themselves as either local or international students and briefly describe their experiences with public transport officers, including authorised officers and protective services officers.

Most of the 22 respondents were anonymous. Among the 14 who identified themselves as international students, nine said they believed they had been racially profiled.

The FOI request inquired about local government areas with the highest ticketing infringements, and what training authorised officers received on interacting with culturally diverse international students.

Figures provided to The Citizen by the Department of Transport and Planning indicated that in the year ending 31 July 2023, most infringement tickets were issued in the Melbourne CBD.

The city is home to tertiary institutions including the University of Melbourne on its northern fringe (with about 45 per cent of its 53,963 enrolments in 2023 from overseas) and RMIT (with about 34 per cent of its 91,284 students international enrolments).

Many popular student accommodation companies such as Scape, Iglu, Journal and Yugo are located within the CBD or adjacent suburbs such as Parkville, catering to international students’ preference for convenience. Melbourne comprises 36 per cent of the national student accommodation room stock, according to commercial real estate company CBRE.

Carlton, Box Hill and Southbank – suburbs which also have a substantial proportion of high-rise and medium-density student accommodation – were the next highest-ranking suburbs for ticket infringement.

Seven of the top 10 local government areas for infringements are also home to or adjacent to major tertiary institutions with strong international enrolments, including Swinburne University in Hawthorn and Monash University in Clayton.

While these figures might imply some correlation between infringements issued and high student populations, it is not possible to tell from the data whether this is due to disproportionate scrutiny of international students or to a lower level of fare compliance among populations new to Melbourne, or to other factors.

Lawyer James Tresise says Youthlaw hears from many international students seeking help about ticketing infringements in inner-city suburbs who report being racially profiled. But he cautions that infringement patterns have multiple factors at play.

The city centre is also an employment, tourist and retail centre with a high volume of traffic that makes it an efficient location for authorised officers to work, and ensure they are meeting performance quotas for issuing infringements.

Training material obtained through FOI appears to indicate officers are instructed on their responsibility not to discriminate on the grounds of race or other protected characteristics.

During officers’ 10-week initial instruction, provided by registered training organisations Metro Academy and Yarra Trams, they are required to complete a unit on working in a “socially diverse environment” which includes training in cross-cultural skills and competency, according to materials obtained via FOI.

The training requirements include an obligation to ensure customers “from all cultural groups are valued and treated with respect and sensitivity”.

Other materials include specific obligations about clarity of language and consequences, and duties to make a record of any apparent difficulties understanding English.

Despite these training materials indicating officers must take cultural differences, including language barriers, into account, several students responding to The Citizen survey described experiences in which these obligations may have been breached.

About six individuals said they had experienced intimidation, abusive language, or violence, many reported being spoken to disrespectfully or “aggressively” by authorised officers.

In one case, an authorised officer allegedly touched and searched a student without consent, despite not being legally allowed to do so. Perceptions of racial bias among officers was a strong theme in the survey responses, including experiences of being singled out while white students were not questioned.

Responses from domestic students of colour indicate that experiences of racial profiling were not limited to international students.

“Our authorised officers undertake extensive training and passengers are entitled to request a review or challenge any fines issued,” a departmental spokesperson said.

The Citizen contacted the office of Victorian Minister for Public and Active Transport Gabrielle Williams for comment, but did not receive a response.

International students are often penalised for “user error mistakes which are not treated with much compassion”, says Tresise.

“Students often struggle to articulate what has happened and why. This results in fines being issued where it may not be issued to someone with local knowledge and language,” he says.

“There are many cultural differences in how people react to authority. This means students often, even if they can, do not articulate their story.”

Even in circumstances where international students have legitimate reasons to dispute fines, Tresise says most tend to pay them.

“They’re probably worried about any implications that might have, and very few seek advice,” he says.

Some experts argue that discrimination occurs through the very nature of patrols of citizens in public places by officers with powers to compel and detain.

Senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Melbourne, Dr Dave McDonald, argues street-based policing has a “disproportionate” effect on marginalised communities that are likely to take public transport, therefore producing a “highly racialised picture”.

Street-based policing refers to the presence of law enforcement in community areas to deter crime levels. While ticket inspectors are not police, they exercise their authority through policing behaviours, he says.

McDonald, who previously worked in police oversight and accountability for the former Office of Police Integrity (replaced by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission in 2013), says that “formally equal” procedures such as inspecting every passenger’s ticket still tend to have “substantially unequal impact” on marginalised communities.

“This is both an individual problem … of bias or discrimination on the part of individual officers, but it’s also systemic and structural. There are broad social factors that compound these issues.”

Anecdotally and in the survey responses, students signal a feeling of helplessness around their experiences – a “what can one person do?” response to the experiences they report.

While officials emphasise that there are clear processes encouraging passengers to report any concerns that an authorised officer has not behaved in accordance with the Code of Conduct, none of the students surveyed who felt they had received an unfair ticketing infringement or experienced discrimination complained to any authority.

The independent Public Transport Ombudsman says the 150 complaints the office had received regarding authorised officers last year was a 168 per cent increase from the previous year’s 56 cases, according to its 2023 annual report. It attributes this to an “increase in patronage and associated AO enforcement activity over the reporting period, as COVID-19 restrictions eased”.

The ombudsman reported that about 140 of the 150 complaints related to behaviours that were “perceived as unprofessional, inappropriate, intimidating and/or discriminatory”. The office conciliated 17 of the complaints, referring the rest back to Metro Trains and Yarra Trams.

The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission received just one complaint against a protective services officer on public transport over the past three years (as of September 2023), but none about authorised officers, according to a spokesperson.

Responding to the student allegations shared by The Citizen, a commission spokesperson said that “the complaints we receive on a particular issue typically represent only a small number of the people who may be experiencing that type of discrimination, sexual harassment or vilification.

“We’re aware that there are many barriers that may deter some people from wanting to make a formal complaint.” Public Transport Victoria’s Fare Compliance Survey, released in October 2023, found an overall “high” compliance of 96.8 per cent, a 0.4 per cent increase from May 2023.