Jason Chin writes for Sydney Morning Herald.
I challenged the fine in court and prevailed.
That experience, however, clarified for me just how grossly imbalanced the system is. I had every resource one could ask for – legal training, advice, time, money – but the process was still dangerous, opaque and unnecessary.
I used the Revenue NSW portal to challenge my ticket. The fine was clearly mistaken, so I thought that would be the end of it (it wasn’t).
Revenue’s response stated that I was in the park with no “reasonable excuse”, which contradicted the public health order in force defining reasonable excuse as “exercise or recreation”. It doesn’t take a legal background to see that “or outdoor recreation” has no meaning if it doesn’t mean something other than exercise.
So, I challenged the ticket in court. At my appearance, I requested the bodycam footage and the particulars of the offence. The court notice referred to sections 7-10 of the public health order without saying which one I allegedly breached. This vagueness is what the Redfern Legal Centre is attempting to challenge.
It’s hard not to conclude that the system failed at every level. The police were not informed about the law they were enforcing. The state’s efficiency mechanism, the pre-trial review by Revenue NSW, showed it also misunderstood the law and had no interest in removing any burden from the courts. There was never any clarity about the offence, further raising the difficulty in defending oneself.
All this supports what we already knew: the system is shockingly imbalanced against accused people without means.
Read full article: I challenged my COVID public health order fine, and won (Sydney Morning Herald, July 18, 2022.)
