Page 3940 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 23 October 1990
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that the unanimous recommendation, twice in a row, of the Scrutiny of Bills Committee will be adopted by the Government and a more responsible attitude will be adopted.
Mr Speaker, another point that arises in relation to this Bill is the issue that I have raised several times since I have become a member of this place, and that is the difficulty of keeping penalties relevant. Mr Moore raised what I think is a very genuine community concern - that these dramatic hikes in penalties for road traffic offences are being seen as a revenue measure. Mr Duby no doubt will defend this move by pointing out that in many cases fines for traffic infringements have not been increased since 1983, and that in general the increases proposed by this Bill are more or less equal to consumer price index movements since 1983. I can accept that explanation. However, it is unfortunate that this Assembly is confronted with a 60 or 70 per cent increase in fines. It raises again the problem that the Assembly sets a monetary penalty for an offence and then years pass during which the Act is not looked at. The Motor Traffic Act will probably fairly regularly be looked at because it impinges upon people's daily lives or revenue, as Mr Moore says.
But in some of the other more obscure pieces of legislation that we have looked at we have found that the penalty has not been varied for many, many years. As I have remarked before, when one looks at the statute books of this Territory one finds a lot of penalties of the order of $20, which were originally 10 pounds and which, when they were enacted as perhaps New South Wales statutes in the last century, were a substantial penalty, but today are quite laughable. The suggestion that has been made previously, and that I make again for the Government's consideration, is to look at the legislative device of penalty units which allows the Assembly once and for all to set a level of penalty and the actual monetary amount of that penalty to be automatically varied on an annual basis so that it remains continually relevant. It is a sensible suggestion which the Opposition will continue to sensibly offer. Perhaps one day it will be adopted.
The other specific item that I wish to raise this evening is the problem of the people who will find themselves unable to pay these increased fines and will find that, as the course of justice takes its effect, they will be spending time in gaol in default. When this Bill was first announced my colleague Mrs Grassby mentioned to the Assembly that the New South Wales Government, when it increased motor traffic penalties, when it in fact doubled those penalties, also changed the fine default rate, which meant that a person would spend the same time in gaol by way of default on a fine under the new penalties as they would have done under the old penalties.
Mrs Grassby made the criticism that when these fines were in effect doubled no action had been taken to alter the default provisions in the ACT, so a person could in fact
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