Revenue NSW Has Retracted More Than 30,000 COVID-19 Fines
Here's how you can check if your fine is among the 33,000 invalid notices.
Over 33,000 fines related to breaches of COVID-19 restrictions have been cancelled by Revenue NSW following a successful High Court challenge over their legal legitimacy.
More than half of the total number of fines issued to people in NSW have been cancelled by the state’s debt recovery office after the department conceded that many of the infringement notices had been issued with vague or incorrect details about the offence.
Fines with the offence description “fail to comply with noticed direction in relation to section 7/8/9 – COVID-19 – Individual” have been retracted by the department, with lawyers from the Redfern Legal Centre preparing a case to dispute the legitimacy of the remaining notices.
The dizzying pace that rules and restrictions shifted under NSW’s COVID-19 public health strategy often set conflicting or confusing mandates, in one instance allowing people to exercise within a five kilometre radius but preventing them from crossing over into another local government area (LGA) within that radius.
Social justice advocates have long criticised the nature of COVID-19 fines, highlighting that they were overwhelmingly issued to First Nations people in lower socioeconomic LGAs, with South-West Sydney experiencing particularly harsh lockdown measures.
Presenting a test case to the High Court this week, Redfern Legal Centre represented a man who was issued a fine in 2021 after pausing to rest in a park during his mandated hour of outdoor exercise. Rohan Pank was given an infringement notice for “sitting for relaxing”, despite the NSW government later clarifying the activity as an acceptable form of outdoor recreation.
After his first two attempts at disputing the fine were knocked back, Revenue NSW dismissed the infringement notice within days of Pank lodging his case with the Supreme Court.
“It’s completely ridiculous,” Plank told The Guardian. “The average person can’t afford to [lodge supreme court proceedings]. It’s not feasible, so I think it’s so ridiculous that it takes that amount of work and effort, and all these people behind the scenes, just to get someone to look at it and enforce the rules correctly.”
Estimating the total value of the invalid fines at $30 million dollars, Revenue NSW has doubled down on the remaining 29,000 COVID infringement notices despite mounting pressure to cancel them, stating “they are not affected by the decision”.
While it is unlikely individuals who have already paid an invalid COVID-19 fine will be re-endorsed, Redfern Legal Centre have encouraged NSW residents with outstanding infringements to check their website to clarify whether their fine is among the 33,000 notices that have been revoked.
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