Political Stunt Question

Good afternoon all!

Location: Darwin, Australia

I’m thinking of protesting the use of proprietary app downloads and QR code scanning for parking meters (particularly for parking spaces that don’t have a cash or card payment method and force you to use a qr link or proprietary app). I believe these are open vectors of malicious action against the public and promote poor cyber security habits.

I want to print QR code stickers (or plain paper taped on over the meter’s QR code) that take people to a webpage with a council petition. The webpage would educate someone on my position. The goal is not free parking, but maintaining the ability to pay by card at the meter. I would also offer a second petition for if the nearest parking meter card payment system is out of service, downloading the app or paying by QR code is not an acceptable mandatory alternative and parking by that meter should be free until repaired unless another functioning meter exists at a reasonable distance.

I know some may disagree with my perspective, but I’m more interested in if this kind of protest or stunt would be legal in the first place. I’m not interested in causing property damage and would have a “don’t care? Here’s the parking meter’s QR link, have a good day” option on the site. I would be temporarily siphoning the QR traffic away for an optional educational piece with a link to return to the intended scan. The educational piece would detail that the user has not scanned the parking meter, but a QR code applied over the top of the legitimate one and that this QR code could have been a scam, fraud or other malicious actor.

I do plan to run this by a local lawyer beforehand, I am just currently out of location and want some preliminary opinions on legality. I’m also interested how it would go in your own locality.

Just as background as to why I’m motivated to do this: a while ago I was fined because a parking meter threw a payment error at me multiple times. I figured I’d tried to do my civil duty to pay and went about my business because the next meter was a decent walk away. Came back and found a fine. i hadn’t taken a photo of the error, so I had no way of fighting it, and they would have argued I could have tried to pay by app (my phone is next to full of things I do not want to delete and I believe having a proprietary app for every business that owns a carpark is unreasonable) or QR.