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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2318 ..

An option which I support and have put to my fellow Attorneys is for each State or Territory to enter into mutual recognition arrangements for the recovery of unpaid fines. At the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General meeting on 14 March 1997 I proposed that each jurisdiction would recognise and enforce all fines deemed by an originating or sentencing jurisdiction to be a court imposed fine. By defining the fines and penalties to be collected as "court imposed fines", all fines, including unpaid infringement notice penalties would be recoverable under the scheme by an enforcing jurisdiction. The enforcement options available to the enforcing jurisdiction would be those already enacted within that jurisdiction. This procedure would take account of the most up to date methods of fine enforcement available in the enforcing jurisdiction without the need for amendment of the legislation once it is in place. The scheme which I proposed envisaged that an originating court would send a copy of an order (imposing a fine) detailing the amount owing to an enforcing court, which the enforcing court would register and take steps to enforce as an order of that enforcing court.

The Standing Committee of Attorneys-General has agreed to consider options for such a scheme, the final form of which is yet to be determined. When other Attorneys report back to the next meeting of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General on their consideration of the issue, the possible structure of, and level of support for, such a scheme may be clearer. Whatever scheme is ultimately devised, it will require legislative force and legislation will

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