Page 2433 - Week 11 - Thursday, 2 November 1989
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Mr Stefaniak mentioned section 556A. That section has allowed, perhaps in some cases, for justice to be granted. In other cases, it has allowed injustice, because it does discriminate. The discretion currently vested in the magistrate under that section is removed. That right currently available to drivers has been taken away. The scheme decriminalises parking offences, and section 556A is only available where a person is charged with an offence. The enforcement of parking fines is achieved through administrative means. Under this scheme, fines for parking infringements should be seen as analogous to other government charges, such as the telephone accounts which have been mentioned.
There is no recourse to a court and no provision to allow a magistrate to decide that, although a person did not pay, in the circumstances he or she should not have to. Section 556A is specifically directed at criminal offences to allow persons in special circumstances to escape having a criminal conviction recorded against them. Such an arrangement is not appropriate for administrative measures. For this and for many other reasons the Bill is a step to ensure greater justice and greater equality amongst people in the ACT, and I am pleased that we are all supporting the broad thrust of it.
MR DUBY (4.15): It is actually quite strange rising to address a Bill about parking fines, realising that it is actually a reform Bill, something that is correcting a situation which has long been a sore on society - the fact that someone who for various reasons cannot or will not pay a parking fine can actually wind up going to gaol. Of course, we are all familiar with the tragic circumstances of the case in New South Wales some 18 months ago, where a person did go to gaol because of inability to pay parking fines and was bashed and is, I believe, seriously and permanently injured to this day.
This Bill, I think, does address that issue and it removes the criminal element from the offence of not paying a parking fine. For that reason we will be supporting it entirely. I think there is general support throughout the Assembly for this reform measure to be introduced. The dispute at this stage seems to be revolving around the actual mechanics of how people will go about paying their parking fines and what people regard as the most appropriate and socially responsible way for that to be done.
One of the things that I have heard Mr Stefaniak say - and I am sure he is genuine in his beliefs in this regard - is that when people do not pay telephone accounts, electricity accounts or things like that on first notice they subsequently get a reminder notice and they then go in and pay them. That is all very well with what we would regard as normal business accounts, but a parking fine is not a normal business account. This boils down to a matter of social responsibility. People who receive a fine of some
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