WHY is it a crime to beg when charity touts can ask us for money on the streets? Beggars can be annoyingly in your face at times but so can eagle-eyed collectors for UNICEF or Plan International, wielding clipboards, waving and waiting to pounce.

Last week, I encountered a short, grinning, extremely wired French backpacker frantically trying to high-five people outside Young and Jackson's. He told me he was collecting for the Clown Doctors, a charity that helps sick children, but was hired by a fund-raising firm.

And how much of the money raised would go to charity? ''Eighty-five per cent,'' he said confidently.

In Bourke Street, an English girl in a UNICEF T-shirt was waving and calling to pedestrians. Outside the State Library, two young women patrolled for Medecins Sans Frontieres. One told me she wasn't paid anything - it was a commission-only gig, through a company called Zest. And how much of the money pledged would go to charity? Eighty per cent, said her colleague.

I'm not saying we should ban such touts - a lot of these charities do a fantastic job. My point is that their calculated bonhomie is part of the rich, flawed cacophony of city life - along with dodgy portrait painters, patchy buskers, walking billboards, distributors of flyers, sellers of the Socialist Alternative and, yes, beggars. Begging alms, however, is a crime under the Summary Offences Act. Often police turn a blind eye to this crime and, importantly, they'll refer beggars to agencies for help.