A Fine Mess

Dan Andrews walks away

Dan Andrews walked away from Victoria yesterday with the state facing a projected gross debt of $220 billion.

Which, I suppose, explains why his government couldn’t be bothered chasing up almost a billion dollars in unpaid traffic fines.

The $867 million owed by motorists is chump change in Dan Andrews’ Victoria. It’s the sort of money his government regularly lost down the back of the couch in the Premier’s Office when talking about hosting the Commonwealth Games.

It was $2 billion, then 7 or maybe $8 billion. Could have turned out to be $12 billion. The billions just sort of disappear in Victoria.

Government documents obtained through Freedom of Information laws the day before Andrews resigned show that, as of June, Victorian motorists owed $867m in unpaid fines.

Plenty of traffic infringements were being issued. It’s just that a lot of people weren’t bothering to pay them.

And why would you? According to Nine News, the documents showed that the government was not exactly motivated to chase after them.

The number of final demand notices issued this year were less than half the number issued five years ago, when the amount owing was far less.

The money owed is comprised of

• $353m in speeding fines

• $276m in unpaid tolls

• $111m in outstanding parking tickets

• $77m in uncollected court penalties

• $50m in red light fines

Victoria Attorney General Jaclyn Symes blamed the pandemic.

“We took a very, um, empathetic response to fine recoupment during Covid for example,” she said.

Well, for sure!

If you look up the word ‘empathetic’ in the Oxford Dictionary there’s a photo of the Victorian Government’s pandemic response where a definition would normally be.

The Victorian Opposition, momentarily stopped calling each other Nazis in order to point out that the money owing could fund an extra 11,000 police. Or John Pesutto’s legal fees defending defamation action from his own female MPs.

So why does no-one pay fines in Victoria?

Maybe people don’t want to give any money to a government that, under Dan Andrews, trashed their civil liberties for two years and that has never so much as even apologised.

Maybe people don’t want to give money to a government that, under Dan Andrews, everyone knows would only take it and then throw it around like confetti.

Maybe people have watched how the government, under Dan Andrews, let 13-year-old murderers off the hook and thought, ‘why should I pay my parking ticket?’

Maybe they’ve seen how the government, under Dan Andrews, went out of its way to accomodate drug addicts with multi million dollar injecting facilities and figured, ‘if they look the other way for a heroin addict they’ll look the other way when it comes to my lead foot’.

Maybe people noticed how the government, under Dan Andrews, promoted gender fluidity at every opportunity and so they have decided to identify as people who don’t owe money to the state.

Maybe people just figured that if Dan Andrews couldn’t recall anything about his $500m hotel quarantine fiasco, so they just wouldn’t recall anything about their $50 parking fine.

The real problem the next Premier faces is not almost a billion dollars in unpaid fines but the complete loss of respect for institutions of authority.

Recouping a billion dollars is the easy part. Regaining the trust and respect of taxpayers is where the hard work must really begin.