Page 1910 - Week 05 - Thursday, 3 May 2012
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The bill makes a range of technical amendments to the processes for issuing and serving infringement notices. In line with current drafting practice, most of the detail is relocated from the act to the regulations. Where possible, the drafting of the provisions has been simplified or broken up into discrete concepts, to assist readers and others who will use the law.
The amendments made by the bill include the omission of provisions that are not consistent with the territory’s current legal framework for human rights, criminal law and evidence. This includes provisions relating to deemed service on multiple parties, provisions relating to the use of statutory declarations in subsequent court proceedings and provisions that provide for someone to be held liable for an offence even though someone else committed it.
New provisions in this bill include expanded review rights in relation to applications for withdrawal and applications for extension of time to do certain things in response to an infringement notice.
Significantly, the bill includes increased flexibility around time to pay arrangements. At present, an application for an extension of time to pay must be made within 28 days of receiving an infringement notice or the subsequent reminder. There is currently no scope for “out of time” applications for extensions of time to pay, even where there may be extenuating circumstances or extreme financial hardship will result.
Last year the Chief Minister established an expert panel to consider options to assist Canberrans struggling to meet living costs. The expert panel examined fees, fines and penalties as part of its review. The amendment in new section 29 is an initial response to the panel’s review recommendations that can be implemented quickly without requiring system changes to the rego.act database.
New section 29, and the associated regulations made under that section, will enable applications for additional time to pay to be “out of time”. The approval of applications will be subject to ministerial guidelines, in the form of a disallowable instrument.
This bill will reform the infringement notice system for the road transport law to provide a more coherent and responsive platform for enforcing the law. While retaining the most effective elements of the current scheme, it includes new approaches to require cooperation from corporations and to reduce the scope for fraudulent statutory declarations from vehicle owners and users, in a way that is fully consistent with our human rights framework and with the established principles of criminal law and evidence. I thank members for their support of the bill and commend it to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
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