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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-09-06 Daily Xml
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MOTOR VEHICLES (DISQUALIFICATION) AMENDMENT BILL

Introduction and First Reading

Received from the House of Assembly and read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Tourism, Minister for the Status of Women) (18:01): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading explanation inserted in Hansard without my reading it.

Leave granted.

This Bill addresses a problem facing governments in this age of electronic information gathering, storage and transmission, namely, programming errors that cause systems to malfunction, resulting in information not being produced or actioned in reasonable timeframes.

Currently, when a driving offence is finalised (for example, through expiation or conviction), information relating to the offence is transmitted electronically from the Courts Administration Authority and South Australia Police to the Registrar of Motor Vehicles. Once received, the Registrar must add the offence to a person’s driving record. Offences appear on the record in chronological order according to the date on which they were committed (or, in the case of expiated offences, allegedly committed).

If an offence results in a person becoming liable to be disqualified from driving, the Registrar must give the person a notice of disqualification. This would happen, for example, if the offence is a breach of a driver’s licence or learner’s permit condition, or if the offence attracts demerit points and when added to the person’s record, the total number of demerit points incurred within a 3 year period equals or exceeds 12 points.

At present, the Registrar has a statutory duty to give a notice of disqualification if the person becomes liable to disqualification under the Motor Vehicles Act. The Registrar has no choice but to act in accordance with the law and is unable to withhold or determine not to give a notice of disqualification.

The Bill changes this position by not allowing the Registrar to give a notice of disqualification where the notice has been delayed by 12 months or more due to government error.

It is the delay in a disqualification being imposed, rather than the delay in information relating to an offence being notified to the Registrar, that causes the additional inconvenience to drivers.

Proposed section 94 provides that if as a result of a government administrative error, a notice of disqualification is not given to a person within 12 months after the person becomes liable for disqualification, the Registrar must not give the notice to the person.

In the case of a demerit points disqualification, demerit points are incurred when the persons expiates or is convicted of the offence by the court. When the total of the demerit points incurred by the person reaches 12 or more for offences committed within 3 years up to the most recent offence the person is liable for disqualification.

Section 94 will not assist a person who by their own acts delays action on an offence being finalised more than 12 months and therefore will not encourage deliberate manipulation of the system in an attempt to avoid a disqualification. Nor will it apply when due to legal processes action on the offence is finalised well after the offence was committed.

12 months is considered a reasonable period. Both the Courts Administration Authority and South Australia Police collect offence data (depending on how action on the offence is finalised). The data is processed on different systems and transferred to the Registrar, who must input the information onto another system, which operates the register of drivers licences.

The Government is taking this positive step as a result of a delay by the Courts Administration Authority that came to light in mid-2011 in transferring over 100,000 offence records relating to orders for relief (allowing for time-payment of expiation fees) dating back over several years. Approximately 8,000 notices of disqualification were given much later than they would have been without the delay.

Not all of these 8,000 people had to serve the disqualification, as 56% had the option of having a condition to be of good behaviour placed on their licence or of entering into a safer driving agreement with the Registrar which allowed them to continue to drive. The greatest inconvenience was to people who were a learner or a provisional licence holder at the time of the offence, had progressed to a higher licence stage prior to being disqualified and after serving the disqualification, regressed to a provisional licence or learner’s permit.

The cause of the delay identified in 2011 was remedied and money has been allocated in the 2012-13 budget to develop a business case to consider improvements to the Courts Administration Authority computer systems. However, in undertaking an audit of its system this year, the Courts Administration Authority has identified approximately 1,200 further offences which were not transmitted to the Registrar at the time of their finalisation. These offences come within the ambit of the Bill.

This amendment should be welcomed by all members as a sensible response to the potential for future data delays and their unintended impact on driver’s licence holders.

I commend the Bill to Members.

Explanation of Clauses

Part 1—Preliminary

1—Short title

2—Commencement

3—Amendment provisions

These clauses are formal.

Part 2—Amendment of Motor Vehicles Act 1959

4—Insertion of section 94

This clause inserts a new section 94 as follows:

94—Administrative errors and notices of disqualification

If, because of an administrative error, a notice of disqualification is not given to a person by the Registrar in accordance with the Motor Vehicles Act 1959 within 12 months after the person became liable to be given that notice, the Registrar must not, despite any other provision of that Act, give the notice of disqualification to the person.

Schedule 1—Transitional provision

1—Application of section 94

Proposed new section 94 is to apply in relation to a notice of disqualification that would (but for the operation of that section) be given by the Registrar after the commencement of clause 4.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.W. Ridgway.

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