Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

BROWN (—) (): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Crimes Amendment (Penalty Unit) Bill 2022 will increase the value of the Commonwealth penalty unit from $222 to $275, with effect from 1 January 2023.

Penalty units determine the maximum fines which can be imposed for offences in Commonwealth legislation and territory ordinances.

This amendment will ensure courts can continue to punish breaches of Commonwealth law with financial penalties that reflect the seriousness of the offending or infringing conduct, and act as a meaningful deterrent to future offending.

The proposed increase is part of an ongoing process of reviewing the value of the Commonwealth penalty unit over time.

It will only apply to a person who has breached a relevant Commonwealth law or territory ordinance.

It does not alter the obligation on a sentencing judge to impose the most appropriate fine or financial penalty in an individual matter, having regard to all relevant circumstances.

This measure is estimated to result in increased revenue to the Commonwealth of $31.6 million over the next four years, which will support the government's budget repair efforts.

Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Crimes Amendment (Penalty Unit) Bill 2022. The purpose of this bill is to increase the Commonwealth penalty unit amount from $222 to $275. Penalty units are used to describe the amount payable for monetary penalties imposed for criminal offences in Commonwealth legislation and territory ordinances. Commonwealth penalties are generally expressed in terms of penalty units rather than specific values to assist with the adjustment of penalties across Commonwealth legislation. This legislation will adjust the penalty unit to reflect community expectations and continue to remain effective in deterring unlawful behaviour.

When the penalty unit was introduced in 1992, the value was set at $100. The value has adjusted four times since it was introduced. It was increased to $110 in 1997, to $170 in 2012, to $180 in 2015 and then to $210 in 2017. In 2015 the former coalition government amended the Crimes Act to introduce an indexation mechanism to automatically increase the value of the penalty unit every three years in line with CPI. An indexation occurred on 1 July 2020 where the penalty unit was increased to $222, where it currently remains today. What the bill before the Senate will do is ensure the three-yearly indexation cycle continues from 1 July 2023.

The coalition will always support laws that will deter crime and will protect the lives of Australians from the threat of criminals. In the 2022-23 March budget, the coalition government announced an investment of $170.4 million in the AFP and the Australian Border Force capabilities to harden Australia's border against transnational, serious and organised crime, including: the establishment of dedicated AFP strike teams to target the importation and manufacture of illicit drugs, firearms and money laundering; boosting the AFP's specialist capabilities to keep pace with the growing threat of outlaw motorcycle gangs, organised crime cartels and other crime groups; and strengthening investment in AFP's Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce to further disrupt the criminal business and remove the profit out of crime. Ensuring our community and borders were protected was always a priority for the former coalition government, and that's why the AFP's funding increased to a record $1.7 billion. In government, the coalition provided our law enforcement intelligence and border agencies the powers and resources they needed to take the profit out of crime and harden Australia's supply chain against criminals.

From the latest analysis by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, transnational serious and organised crime costs the Australian economy up to $60.1 billion per year. This is unacceptable. This has a devastating impact for families and communities, causing lost income, health and social impacts and the erosion of public trust in our government, business and public institutions.

The AFP led operation IRONSIDE publicly exposed the insidious and pervasive impact that transnational serious and organised crime has on the safety and security of Australia. Whilst Operation IRONSIDE was a success, there is more work to do. This bill continues on that work and that is why these changes are necessary. On that note, I commend the bill to the Senate.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Crimes Amendment (Penalty Unit) Bill 2022 will increase the value of the Commonwealth penalty unit from $222 to $275, and that will take effect from 1 January next year. This is the way in which fines are meant to keep pace with inflation, without having to amend each and every bill.

We do not oppose the bill, but we would like to take this opportunity to talk about the urgent need to make the fine system and the way in which penalty units are applied far fairer. Fines are the most common summary penalty, but it's clear that fines don't have an equal impact as a punishment or deterrent and it depends on who is receiving them. For a person on jobseeker payments a single penalty unit imposed at $222, or now $275, is crippling, but the billionaires and multimillionaires in this country wouldn't even notice it.

Fines need to be in proportion to income to really be fair. A $275 fine means nothing to a banker or a property developer, but to a student, a person on the NDIS, a renter, someone on jobseeker that $275 means skipping meals. It means unpaid rent for the week. It means missing a wisdom tooth removal that you have already been waiting six months to afford. An action punishable by a fine too often just means it's legal for rich people. Fine enforcement, as it currently occurs, produces deeply unfair and often escalating hardships for vulnerable people who, not being able to pay a fine, may then go on to lose their driver's licence. Then they may be caught driving without a licence, lose their job and find themselves dragged into the criminal justice system.

We commend the work by the Law and Justice Foundation to the Senate. I want to give a particular call out to the work of Professor Julia Quilter and those others in that team who have worked on this important issue. An income based model is already in place in other jurisdictions, including Finland, where the method for calculating fines is based on the amount of spending money a person has for one day and then it's divided in half. It is based on their income.

I pushed the need for this in New South Wales and, thankfully, we managed to secure changes that ensured people on government benefits can receive a 50 per cent lesser fine than the fines issued to others. That's fair because it has a far bigger impact even at that lesser amount. We were told, however, that income based fines were impossible to do at a state level, because the states didn't have access to the taxation data necessary to determine income based fines. Well, that's clearly not an issue at the federal level. We call on the federal government to take steps to address the clear unfairness of fixed-level fines regardless of income. The law needs to be just and treat people equally. Equal treatment doesn't mean the same treatment. That's the fundamental flaw in how the Commonwealth uses fines and it's the flaw that this bill fails to fix.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank my colleagues for their contributions on the Crimes Amendment (Penalty Unit) Bill 2022. This bill will increase the value of penalty units to ensure that financial penalties for Commonwealth offences reflect community expectations and continue to remain effective in deterring unlawful behaviour. This bill amends section 4AA of the Crimes Act, which prescribes the value of monetary penalties across Commonwealth legislation and territory ordinances. The bill will increase the value of penalty units from $222 to $275, with effect from 1 January 2023. It will also update the indexation year to 2023 to ensure that the three-year indexation cycle continues unaffected from 1 July 2023. I thank people for their contributions.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.