Parking fines set for review
Loophole could force city to repay $730k
GEELONG council may be forced to repay $730,000 in wrongly processed parking fines.
The City of Greater Geelong has revealed 7300 parking infringement appeals are up for detailed review, after inadvertently using parking contractor Tenix to illegally review fine appeals between 2006 and 2016.
The legal fiasco has caught out a number of Victorian local councils. City of Monash was forced to repay $2.6 million to 26,500 motorists, and the City of Kingston has confirmed it would refund $2.3 million for about 20,000 fines.
While Monash and Kingston admitted legal fees would sting the councils for up to $500,000 and $35,000 respectively, Geelong council has refused to comment on the legal costs of their review.
“The city doesn’t provide comment on the costs of legal investigations,” planning and development director Gareth Smith said.
“We are currently reviewing the appeals process for some parking infringements issued between 2009-2018,” he said.
“Our initial inquiries indi- cate that up to 7300 infringement appeals received by the city, worth up to $730,000, will be subject to the detailed review.
“We expect the review to be complete in the coming weeks.”
The appeals being reviewed represent about 13 per cent of the 56,000 appeals received by council during the period.
The Victorian parking fine fiasco was sparked by the 2006 introduction of the Infringements Act, which called on councils to undertake the final decision on reviews rather than outsourcing them to contractors such as Tenix.
The Geelong fines revelation comes as a lawyer who played a key role in revealing the legal hitch warns millions of traffic fines issued by Victoria Police could have also been processed unlawfully.
Lawyer Adam Cockayne, from Fine Defender, said that Victoria Police could potentially have to repay more than $500 million to motorists who had their traffic fines reviewed unlawfully.
But a Victoria Police spokeswoman said that all requests for internal review of a fine were carried out by police.