Infringements and Unpaid Fines

If you are issued with a traffic fine but failed to pay on time, Fines Victoria adds enforcement costs to the original fine. If the fine goes unpaid for an extended period, the amount of enforcement cost is more than double the original fine.

Where it is an unpaid toll road fine, the fine and enforcement costs can be close to $400
when the original toll would have only been about $10.

Failure to Nominate or Contest the Fine

When the fine is first issued, you have 28 days to nominate another driver or defend the case in court. If you receive the fine when it is issued and don’t take any action, you are not able to challenge it later.

However, if the fine was not received by you because it was sent to the wrong address or you had moved house (or similar) you can apply for an extension of time to nominate another driver or defend the case. There are very strict timelines on when you can do this.

From the date you find out about the fine (having already missed the standard 28 day deadline) you have 14 days to apply for an extension.

The method for applying for an extension depends on the type of fine. If the fine involves an automatic loss of license (such as drink-driving or speeding more than 25 km/h) you must apply for the extension via the Magistrates’ Court.

If the fine is an infringement notice (an unpaid toll, a red light, low level speed or parking fine) you can apply for the extension via the Fines Victoria website.

It is important in both cases that the application is made within 14 days. You have to swear a statutory declaration to confirm that you have not known about the fine for more than 14 days.

If the extension is granted, you are given another 28 days in which to nominate the correct driver or send the case to court to be defended. If you miss that deadline, you have no further options.

ARREST BY THE SHERIFF – Personal Fines Only

Penalty Enforcement Warrant matters have been in abeyance since 1 January 2018 when Fines Victoria succeeded Civic Compliance. By reason of difficulties with the software management system of Fines Victoria, the Sheriff’s Office Victoria ceased arresting fine defaulters and no matters were brought to Court. In about June 2021, the Sheriff
commenced arresting people for unpaid fines.

The powers of the Court are contained in section 165 of the Fines Reform Act 2014. It is important to the note that the powers in section 165 are more expansive than they were under the legislation that previously governed these matters, being section 160 of the Infringements Act (repealed).

The powers are contained in section 165(1).

The test for exercising those powers is in section 165(2). The court can rely on
section 165(2)(a), (b), (c), and (d) to invoke the powers contained in subsection (1).
Subsections (2)(b), (c), and (d) provide:

(a) that a person in default has a mental or intellectual impairment, disorder, disease or illness; or

(b) without limiting paragraph (a), that special circumstances* apply to a person in default; or

(c) that having regard to the person in default’s situation, imprisonment would be excessive, disproportionate or unduly harsh.

(d) that the person in default is a victim of family violence that substantially contributed to the person being unable to control the conduct which constituted the offending.

Special circumstances is defined in section 3A of the Infringements Act 2006.
Special Circumstances includes:

• Mental or intellectual disability
• Serious addiction to drugs
• Homelessness
• Victim of family violence

If the court finds that one of the categories listed in section 165(2) (listed above) applies, it has the following powers. It can:

1. Discharge all the fines (there remains nothing to pay);
2. Discharge some of the fines (pay a smaller amount on a payment plan)
3. Discharge some of the fines and make you do community service
4. Adjourn the case for 6 months to see how you go over that time.

Being arrested by the Sheriff is the only way to get your unpaid fine cases dealt with at court. There used to be another process under the Infringements Act, but the state government abolished it.

This sounds much worse than it is. We defend hundreds of these cases. It is the most effective way to reduce a large amount of fines down to something manageable.

Most people, when they think of an arrest, assume they’re going to be in handcuffs, in prison cells and a have a criminal record. None of that happens when you are arrested by the Sheriff. The Sheriff is one of the few government departments that is reasonable to deal with. They try and work with you to solve the problem of the fines. In most cases, the arrest is done by appointment at a time agreed with you.

Before you are arrested by the Sheriff, check what your assets are. The Sheriff is likely to seize the following items in order to satisfy the debt:

• A motor vehicle worth more than $8,000 that has no finance registered against it;
• A jet ski;
• A boat;
• A motorbike;
• A caravan;

If it is easily accessible, able to be sold at auction and is not required for your business, the Sheriff is likely to seize that first.

The seized items will be sold at auction (usually at a lower value). The auction costs are then deducted and the balance is applied against your debt. That means, a $10,000 car sold at auction, might only reduce your debt by $6500.

If you don’t have any of those items, the Sheriff will issue a document called a Seven Day Notice. Ultimately, a seven day notice is a good document to receive because it starts the process of getting the fines reduced at court.

After you have been arrested, the Sheriff will provide you with a court date. That is when we become important. In our experience, we usually have the fines reduced by 90%.

There are variations. We consider a 90% reduction to be a good outcome. We often achieve a bigger reduction than that.

We take a detailed history about your circumstances and, in most cases, get reports and references that we use at court. We also prepare a spreadsheet of your fines to show to the court how much the fines have been inflated because of the enforcement costs.

Once the court sees just how much a small fine has grown to, we can convince them to make bigger reductions.

Usually at court you are not required to say or do anything. In some cases the court will ask you to confirm in court that what you have told your lawyers is correct.

Unpaid fine cases are not criminal matters. There is no record of these cases on your criminal history.

The end result of a sheriff arrest is usually significant easing of stress and an ability to move on with your life and start making plans again.

Unfortunately, the court cannot reduce company fines. There used to be an easy application to get company fines to court and have them reduced. This was obviously very important because company fines are usually around $3600 and only get reduced when the correct driver has been nominated and the nomination has gone through or the charge has been defended in court. That means, if you fail to nominate the fine or challenge it in court within the specified time frame, these fines accrue very quickly to unmanageable amounts.

The only thing you can do with a company fine is apply for an extension of time to nominate or defend in Court (see the commentary above) or seek an enforcement review (see commentary above).

If you do not nominate, defend or have a successful enforcement review, the company must pay the full amount of the fines. There is no mechanism to get company fines before the court. The only thing you can then do is obtain a payment plan.