The centre says it is assisting a number of clients who have been issued with fines ranging from $1000 to $3000 for sitting in a park away from others, not gathering and not in an Area of Concern.
Samantha Lee, solicitor with the policy accountability practice at Redfern legal centre, says they are concerned the cases they are seeing are just the “tip of the iceberg.”
Ms Lee said the laws around social distancing have changed more than 60 times since they were first introduced and she herself struggles to keep up with them.
“What that does is it causes great confusion, not just for members of the community but for agencies such as Revenue NSW who assess the appeals.
Unfortunately First Nations people are usually the ones who are more policed than other communities, and when new offences are introduced what happens is those who are policed are just policed more.”
Read full article and listen to podcast (NIRS, 26 August 2021)
