Tuesday, 12 May 2026

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (17:45): (2500) My adjournment this evening is for the Attorney-General. The action I seek is for the Attorney-General to urgently introduce legislation to end imprisonment and the threat of imprisonment for unpaid fines debt in Victoria. No-one should be jailed because they are poor, and no-one should face prison for failing to pay a fine for an offence that would never in itself result in a prison sentence. Yet in Victoria, people can still be threatened with imprisonment for unpaid fines arising from some low-level matters such as tolls, parking, littering and other infringements. The result of this situation is a two-tiered justice system. People who have the financial capacity to pay move on with their lives, but people experiencing poverty, homelessness, family violence, mental illness or other hardship are dragged deeper and deeper into a web of enforcement fees, warrants and ultimately the threat of prison. Imprisonment for unpaid fines is unjust because it punishes poverty, not wrongdoing. Imprisonment and threats of imprisonment cause severe and avoidable harm to individuals, families and communities, particularly First Nations peoples. The safeguards in the Fines Reform Act 2014 are failing in practice, with outcomes disproportionately affecting marginalised Victorians.

In 2023–24 imprisonment-in-lieu orders would have taken an average of 12.6 years to comply with. One order would have taken 165 years to repay, and another historic order would have taken 264 years. The lowest monthly repayment amount was just $5. If someone can only afford $5 a month, in reality they do not actually have capacity to pay and they should not be threatened with prison. Historic imprisonment warrants made under repealed laws also undermine the government’s own justice intentions in repealing those laws. Options that merely reprocess or manage those warrants do not fix the fundamental injustice in these cases, and they risk causing further harm and would be impractical and burdensome for vulnerable people and for our justice system alike.

The harms that flow from unnecessary imprisonment are obvious: even a short time can cost someone their job, their home, their health, their family stability and their connection to community. For First Nations peoples that risk is even more serious, particularly given the shameful and ongoing crisis of deaths in custody in this country. There is a sensible and practical path forward: to void outstanding imprisonment warrants made under repealed or superseded laws, to remove imprisonment from section 165 of the Fines Reform Act and to recover fines debt through existing alternatives to imprisonment. Attorney, poverty is not a crime, and Victoria’s fines system should finally reflect that.