Revenue NSW figures show police issued nearly 62,000 fines totalling $56.4 million from March 2020 to April 2022 for various breaches of the public health orders to control the COVID-19 pandemic.
Revenue NSW figures show police issued nearly 62,000 people with fines from March 2020 to April 2022.James Brickwood
That includes 50,000 fines issued between July and September last year to enforce stay-at-home orders aimed at curbing the Delta outbreak as the state raced to vaccinate the population.
Fines could be issued for breaches such as not wearing masks,travelling further than five kilometres from home,gathering in groups,and breaking curfew in the 12 local government areas of concern,but without specifying the offence.
Most of these fines are now months overdue and in the enforcement phase,which means people could have their possessions seized,money taken from their bank accounts,their car registrations cancelled and their driver’s licences suspended.
NSW Minister for Finance Damien Tudehope said the public health orders were “in place to ensure as many people as possible were protected from the global health pandemic”.
“The community has an expectation that government take steps to ensure fines are collected on behalf of the taxpayers of NSW,” he said.
Tudehope said there were options for a customer to have a fine reviewed if they believed it had been incorrectly issued,or to organise a payment plan if they had difficulty paying.
He added that Revenue NSW was contacting vulnerable customers,including people under the age of 18,to provide support and in some cases this would lead to debts being written off.
However,the COVID-19 fines are specifically excluded from Revenue NSW’s 50 per cent reduction scheme for hardship cases.
Labor Opposition Leader Chris Minns declined to comment. Sue Higginson,the justice spokesperson for the Greens,said 46,000 outstanding fines should be enough for the government to accept it had got it wrong.
“What we found with these COVID fines is a majority of them,in our experience,were not issued according to law,so it’s a due process issue rather than a public health issue.”
Sam Lee,Redfern Legal Centre solicitor
“We said at the outset the NSW government can’t police its way out of the pandemic and it looks like we were right,” Higginson said. “It was a cruel and senseless strategy. Enforcing these fines will be an absurd waste of public resources and is not in the public interest.”
Higginson said she would call on the government to withdraw the fines when state parliament was next sitting.
Police are continuing to fine people for breaching isolation and other requirements under the public health orders but the pace is much slower with 2575 people since January fined $1.2 million between them. That’s still more than in either 2019-2020 or 2020-2021.
NSW mounted police patrolling the streets of Fairfield during the 2021 Delta lockdown.Kate Geraghty
Redfern Legal Centre solicitor Sam Lee said many people on low incomes could not afford to pay the fines,which were as high as $5000 at the height of the lockdown in 2021.
The average amount outstanding is about $900,which is more than $120 above the weekly minimum wage.
“People are struggling to keep up with the cost of living and these fines went up around 200 per cent during the pandemic,” Lee said.
Lee said previous figures obtained under freedom of information laws showed most fines were issued in lower socio-economic areas,including some rural areas with a high Aboriginal population.
The figures show 15,400 people are on a payment plan to pay off a collective $14.5 million in fines over time,while 2700 people owing $2.5 million are working it off under a work development order.
Many of Lee’s clients also felt strongly that the fines had been issued incorrectly and they shouldn’t have to pay because they had done nothing wrong.
Then-police commissioner,Mick Fuller,said at the start of Operation Stay-at-Home in August that police needed to “start writing tickets” to enforce compliance with lockdown measures and he would not act against police officers over incorrectly issued fines.
The figures show 9000 people representing $9.9 million worth of fines requested a review of their penalty from Revenue NSW,but only 1200 people representing $1.3 million worth of fines were successful in having their penalties withdrawn.
However,Lee said in her experience people who elected to fight the fines in court were usually successful,often because police withdrew the charges after being shown why the fine was issued incorrectly.
For example,she was dealing with one couple who were fined $1000 each for going for a walk near their home in Alexandria in the inner west,despite the fact this was allowed under the lockdown rules. Their request for an internal review was unsuccessful.
“What we found with these COVID fines is a majority of them,in our experience,were not issued according to law,so it’s a due process issue rather than a public health issue,” she said.
“I don’t necessarily blame police because the orders kept changing so rapidly that no one was keeping up properly. It was inevitable that the outcome was going to be badly issued fines.”
Nearly 3000 people representing $3.8 million in unpaid fines have chosen to fight the penalty in court.
But Lee said many people could not take the risk of legal action because it then became criminal proceedings rather than a fine,and the court could impose a higher fine or a criminal record.
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories,analysis and insights..