Penalties and Sentences and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2008
Posted by Administrator (admin) on Nov 28 2008
2008 >>

Mr LAWLOR (Southport—ALP) (12.44 pm):

I support the Penalties and Sentences and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2008. This bill will amend the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 to increase the penalty unit value from $75 to $100 for all offences other than local law offences. The penalty unit for infringement notice penalties has not increased since 1999 and for other offences has not increased since 1995. These units have not been indexed and so the level of punishment and deterrence for offences has been effectively reduced over time.

Queensland is well behind other states in respect of prescribed penalty unit value. In fact, even with these rises, we will still be the lowest in Australia. For instance, the Commonwealth, New South
Wales, Victoria and the Northern Territory apply a penalty unit value of $110. Tasmania applies the highest unit value of $120. Western Australia ranges from $50 for road offences to $110 for more
serious offences. The ACT is $100 and South Australia does not have penalty units.

The member for Toowoomba South raised a few issues about the increase and how it was outrageous and so on. You should have been pinched for overacting I think, Mike.

Mr Horan: What penalty is that?

Mr Hinchliffe: A very severe one. It should be a very severe one.

Mr LAWLOR: It should be life imprisonment in his case. He runs a rural property. Just think about it. Is he paying the same to run that rural property that he was a decade ago? Of course he is not. But that was avoided in his contribution.

This bill includes provision to enable the penalty unity amount for local government laws to be prescribed under the Penalties and Sentences Regulation 2005 to a value of not more than $100. This
provision will allow each local authority time to consider whether the value of a penalty unit should be increased or even reduced in respect of penalties for some offences. So when this bill commences a
regulation will be made setting the value of the penalty unit for local laws at $75 pending decisions by individual local authorities about whether to increase the value of the penalty unit to $100.
This is another thing that was not mentioned by the member for Toowoomba South. Some fines will have the number of penalty units reduced to maintain the existing dollar amount and those fines relate to, firstly, liquor offences that apply to Indigenous communities. These penalties were recently reviewed by the government as part of alcohol reform in May this year. Secondly, some offences that are part of the national framework for gene technology, food safety, heavy vehicles and rail will also be
reduced. This reduction will maintain consistency with national schemes.

Additional revenue resulting from the increase in the value of penalties so far as traffic offences are concerned will be put back into road safety initiatives and the new victims of crime financial
assistance scheme. Again, quoting the member for Toowoomba South, he said, ‘As far as I can recall, the responsibility of the opposition in a unicameral parliament is to tell the people of Queensland what is happening.’ Has he done that? Of course he has not, except in a selective manner where he picked out the issues that he thought were important. He left out the issues where there was a reasonable reason
for the increase—that is, there has been no increase for almost a decade and in some cases the actual penalty units have been reduced. But of course that part of the story was not told.

Mr Horan: I told that part—about one section of the bill where the schedule was just recently—

Mr LAWLOR: No, no, no, no. That is a different thing altogether.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Wendt): Order! Member for Toowoomba South. Please direct your comments through the chair if you wish to interject.

Mr LAWLOR: Finally, in relation to the contribution by the member for Kawana, who unfortunately has left the House—or fortunately has left the House—so far as his credibility goes, all I can do is refer
members back to the comment he made when he was the chairman of the planning committee up at the north coast and he ignored his own town plan. When asked by the local newspaper to explain himself,
he said, ‘Well, if a chairman can’t ignore the town plan, what’s the point of being chairman?’ I commend the bill to the House.

Last changed: [PUBLISHED_DATE] at 2:32 AM