Page 1906 - Week 05 - Thursday, 3 May 2012
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The second key amendment in this bill is intended to persuade corporations to identify the drivers of vehicles involved in offences. Apparently many corporations fail to identify the drivers that were using their vehicles and instead choose to pay the corporate penalty rate of five times the individual penalty. However, this means that the demerit points are not allocated to the actual driver. I agree with the government that this is unacceptable. The department informed me that on average there are 1,500 speeding and red light offences each year where corporations fail to identify the driver, which is a surprisingly high amount.
Under the changes proposed, if a corporation fails on two or more occasions to take all reasonable steps to assist the administering authority to identify the driver of a vehicle that is involved in an offence and that is registered to the corporation, sanctions will be applied to the corporation’s vehicle. The sanction is suspension of the registration of the vehicle for a period of up to six months.
I think this is an appropriate penalty and I note that the legislation also allows for the issuing of warning notices and for a right of review. I expect it will lead to a significantly greater number of corporations declaring the identity of drivers. The start date for these provisions is in two years time, which I imagine will provide the necessary time to accommodate the scheme.
There are also amendments in this bill relating to applications for an extension of time to pay a traffic infringement. The bill will allow for applications for additional time to respond to an infringement notice to be made “out of time”. Under the current system, if a person misses the deadline to pay, their licence is automatically suspended. This amendment will at least provide people the opportunity to apply for an extension of time, which may avoid the loss of their licence.
The Greens are happy to support this amendment. It is an improvement on the current system. But I do want to make a few points about it. The key point is that this amendment does only a fraction of what needs to occur to improve flexibility in the traffic infringement system.
As members will know, I tabled a bill in February this year to establish a more appropriate response to the problem of inflexibility in the traffic infringement system. The Greens’ bill makes several changes to ensure that the ACT’s system of traffic infringement administration takes appropriate account of the circumstances of disadvantaged and vulnerable people. It recognises the potentially devastating impact that a traffic fine and licence suspension due to a failure to pay a fine can have on a person’s life. The current system is not dealing with this appropriately.
After this minor government amendment is passed, the system will be improved but will still not be dealing with the entirety of the issue. The Greens’ bill sets out a scheme for payments by instalments. It makes this option available automatically to people with a Centrelink healthcare card or pensioner concession card or a Department of Veterans’ Affairs pensioner concession card or gold card. This option is available in other jurisdictions but not currently in the ACT.
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