Often it's unofficially the policy. For PT ticket fines in Melbourne, I've never heard of someone having a fine enforced for the first problem. It's pretty much always just a warning logged against you.
Where I'm from there's no concept of towing on any parking violations. No one has the right to touch your vehicle, and if the police is involved they'd just contact the owner. The police would only move a car if it's a danger to the public.
A tow truck is only something you'd call for assistance, not something you fear seeing.
(Parking fines suck, but the municipal ones are usually more reasonable here, even if they don't always get the rules right. It's the parking companies managing large private parking lots, often for free to the lot owner, that are absurd.)
I don't know of a country that requires all bicycle parking in any non-private location to be paid, nor a country that requires payment for roadside parking on country roads outside cities. Heck, even within cities, only the very dense ones seem to require paid parking on smaller roads.
Public space does not imply free of any use, but rather that it is freely used by all. The purpose of paid roadside parking is to reduce demand on what quickly becomes a limited resource in dense cities.
Here (Denmark), blocking a drive-way would not be a parking violation handled by a parking inspector, but a traffic violation handled by the police. They would contact you directly and have you sprint to your car.
Parking tickets are also considered fees, paid to those managing the parking area (municipality for public roads), as opposed to fines issued by the police or a judge and subject to very specific rules.
