Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Hansard source

The Crimes Amendment (Penalty Unit) Bill 2022 will increase the value of the Commonwealth penalty unit from $222 to $225, with effect from 1 January 2023. The bill also provides that indexation will occur every three years from 1 July 2023. Effectively, the government is imposing an additional increase on the value of the penalty unit from 1 January 2023, with triannual indexation resuming on 1 July 2023.

Penalty units determine the maximum fines which can be imposed for offences in Commonwealth legislation and territory ordinances. When the penalty unit was introduced in 1992 its value was set at $100. This was adjusted to $110 in 1997, $170 in 2012, $180 in 2015 and $210 in 2017. In 2015 the Crimes Act was amended to introduce an indexation mechanism to automatically increase the value of the penalty unit, every three years, in line with the consumer price index. An indexation occurred on 1 July 2020 when the penalty unit was increased to $222.

This bill will increase the revenue return to the Consolidated Revenue Fund for pecuniary penalties imposed, for the commission of Commonwealth criminal offences, by $31.6 million over four years. It's not entirely lost on members of the coalition that the amount to which the Commonwealth penalty unit is being increased, $275, is the one amount that the Prime Minister doesn't want to talk about in this House—because that was the same amount he promised Australians their power bills would be reduced by.

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