Page 5820 - Week 18 - Tuesday, 10 December 1991
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Under the Bill the penalty will be $500 for exceeding the speed limit by more than 45 kilometres an hour. That is a substantial penalty. We make no apology for that. It will apply to very excessive speeds - on the open road, speeds in the order of 155 kilometres an hour and, through a school zone, speeds of something like 85 kilometres an hour. The area where this penalty will most often be applied is probably school zones throughout urban Canberra, and I think that will be a good thing.
Mr Moore: That is a sad statement, but it is true.
MR CONNOLLY: It is a sad statement, as Mr Moore says, that people may not observe school speed limits. But, if people choose not to, they will take a fairly substantial penalty.
Some comments were made by a number of members about whether this was a revenue issue or a safety issue. I would assert that this is not a revenue issue. I hope that it does not lead to substantial increases in revenue, because I hope that people will learn the lesson and moderate their speeds, particularly around school zones.
An issue that was raised by Mr Moore requires an answer, although I think both Mr Stefaniak and Mr Collaery adverted to what the answer is. That issue is what appears, on the face of it, to be a dramatic increase for the court imposed sanction from $500 to $2,000. The essential reason why we are doing that is that it is important to maintain a fairly significant parity between the amount you are fined under an infringement notice - the TIN or on-the-spot fine - and what you can get in the courts. Unless in going to court there is a risk of getting a substantially higher fine than you would get if you paid the on-the-spot fine, the incentive is for people to take a punt and go to court and argue the case out. It must be realised that courts do not come cheap. It is very expensive to deal with motor offences in the magistrates courts.
The traffic infringement notices have been a feature in the ACT since about 1983 and similarly around Australia since the late 1970s and early 1980s. If we did not have on-the-spot fines or traffic infringement notices, the system of justice in the ACT and in every other State and Territory in Australia would simply grind to a halt. The magistrates courts could not cope with the number of offences that are now dealt with by on-the-spot fines. So, it is important that we, in a sense, actively discourage people from punting on a day in court.
As Mr Stefaniak said, if people object to a traffic notice, it is their right to go to court and challenge it. But, as Mr Collaery observed, in practice very rarely are they likely to be successful. Often it is perhaps a case of
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