Page 3944 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 23 October 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
chamber would probably have witnessed, quite often, when driving about Canberra and interstate, some shocking acts of driving. I think it behoves us, as a responsible Assembly, to ensure that people are deterred, in whatever way we can deter them, from driving irresponsibly, for the public's benefit and for their own benefit as well. Indeed, in relation to people being worried - - -
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Jensen): Order! The level of conversation in the chamber is too high. I would request members to keep it down to allow the member with the call to speak.
MR STEFANIAK: Thank you, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, for your protection and your ruling - not so much your protection, but certainly your ruling. As I was saying, only regular offenders need worry about that, and they surely are the people we want to deter. I do not think we should be particularly concerned if some people are going to be paying more because they offend. It is their choice as to whether they obey the road traffic rules. Indeed, it behoves a responsible community to ensure that penalties are adequate, and this Bill introduced by Mr Duby goes some way towards redressing what was a serious inadequacy in ACT law.
Mr Connolly has also shown a surprising interest, perhaps, in how the local courts operate in relation to a worry about people going to gaol if they do not pay. These are traffic infringement notices. If a person does not pay them they do not automatically go to gaol. The next step is that they receive a summons to go to court for that offence to explain to the court, to defend it or in fact to plead guilty to not paying the traffic infringement notice. If they are then fined by the court and they do not pay they do receive a period of imprisonment in default. I might advise the Assembly and Mr Connolly that no-one leaves the Territory if they only have to serve four days in default. They serve that as a matter of course in the remand centres, or more likely in the police cells. So, to say that if people do not pay a traffic infringement notice they go to gaol is rubbish; a lot of steps have to be taken before then. Indeed, as Mr Connolly indicated, amongst a lot of inaccuracies, magistrates do have a discretion and people can be given time to pay, and a considerable time to pay if they are in difficult financial circumstances. But I think it would be a pretty stupid and irresponsible person in difficult financial circumstances who was even able to afford to drive a motor car and who committed a series of traffic offences to just make it harder for themselves.
These traffic infringement notices are far less draconian than the parking offences brought in by Mrs Grassby when she was in office, whereby if you did not pay a parking ticket you could lose your car licence, you could lose your registration and have no third party insurance. That is a quite draconian penalty for a very minor offence. The penalties here are far less draconian than that.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .