Georgina Mitchell reports for Sydney Morning Herald
In a case filed in the NSW Supreme Court this week, three people who received fines ranging from $1000 to $3000 during the 2021 lockdown are seeking for the fines and their enforcement orders to be declared invalid, and an order that any money they paid be refunded.
The administrative law case, brought against the NSW police commissioner and the Commissioner of Fines Administration, will attempt to set a precedent that may result in thousands of fines being withdrawn.
Samantha Lee, senior police accountability solicitor at the Redfern Legal Centre – who is representing the three plaintiffs – said it’s “a big case”.
“We’re talking around 45,000 fines, and most of the fines were issued to those in lower socioeconomic areas, and also First Nations people,” Lee said. “For us this is about them, and trying to get some kind of justice which they haven’t got through the review system.”
The plaintiffs will argue that their fines are not valid because the penalty notices do not provide enough detail, as required under the Fines Act. Two of the fines are for breaching “section 7/8/9”, while one is for breaching a gathering restriction.
Lee said the descriptions on the fines were so broad that they could apply to hundreds of clauses in the ten public health orders that were in place at the time. This made it difficult, if not impossible, to challenge the fine in a criminal court.
According to statistics released under a Government Information (Public Access) request, 2844 COVID fines were issued to children between July 1 and November 10 last year, the majority for “not comply with noticed direction re section 7/8/9, COVID-19”.
The children were issued fines totalling more than $1.5 million for this offence alone, with fines for all juvenile COVID-related offences worth a combined $2.079 million.
Lee said RLC supports public health and keeping the community safe, “but for these fines, we are of the view that the rule of law was not adhered to, and people were not given due process when it came to being fined”.
The case will be mentioned in court on July 19.
Read the full article: Supreme Court test case that could throw out thousands of NSW COVID fines (Sydney Morning Herald, 16 July 2022).
