$850 Unpaid Rego Fine

Hi guys,

Last night my sister got pulled over and fined $850 for a 50 day expired registration. It seems her registration bill was being sent to an email at a previous place of employment that wasn't forwarded on.
Obviously this is her fault for (a) not thinking to change her email address (or not sending it to a private address to begin with), and (b) not realising that she hadn't paid for a rego refresh 2 months later than she normally would have.
However these do seem like minor oversights and an $850 fine seems pretty severe, when you get a lesser fine for doing >30km/h over the limit.

She's 39 years old, has paid rego on time since she was 18 years old, has a pretty clean driving record and ironically she works as a volunteer driving instructor for disadvantaged youths.
I'm just wondering if you guys think there's any merit in contesting it (or asking for a reduced fine)?

Edit: New information has come in.
She'd opted out of postal mail notification, and was just receiving email reminders/payment information, which she was set to receive in her personal mail.
As a driving instructor you have to put down your instructor details down when the kids go for their tests. Because of this, her previous employer had set all of that to their business details, including email, which is where her rego would have been sent.
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

Comments

  • I'll put my previous 2 posts here:

    1: I suggest you read my earlier post, and if she tries to explain the situation make sure she specifically says in the letter that she "apologizes, is sorry and asks for forgiveness", the law is based on the King James bible and it talks about forgiveness but you have to ask for it and then magistrates are normally bound to be more lenient and frequently forgive completely.

    2: There's a lot of moral judgement in most people's replies here, but basically it's unconstitutional the registration and in my opinion just racketeering to collect revenue and nothing to do with safety.

    Lookup http://www.aussiespeedingfines.com/ and see whether they have anything in their products to help with this, you can send them an email to confirm.

    First time I went to court to fight the racketeering fines it was frightening, but I don't seem to get fines sent to me after I get pulled over by police and state my rights.

    If above site doesn't help you can look up the following also:

    https://www.knowyourrightsgroup.com.au/
    https://www.solutionsempowerment.com/

    and just ignore all the sheeple here moralizing and giving you their conformist opionions.

  • I'd say that for offences which purely involve monetary penalties (such as unregistered/uninsured, parking fines), they aren't worth disputing.

    However, for demerit point offences and licence suspensions they are worth going to court for to plead mercy. Anything where the offence list is 'padded' or 'stacked' by overzealous cops is also worth disputing in court (magistrates take a very dim view of this practice).

    That being said $850 isn't really that hefty a penalty. If you have a crash while unregistered, you are totally uninsured for bodily injury (which the state ends up having to pick the tab up for if you're bankrupted due to being unable to pay) - that's worth a lot more than $850.

  • $850 seems outrageous for a first time offense of this nature…

  • -1

    Your rego date doesn't change every year…. its the same date!

    Like your mother-in-laws birthday, put it in your phone and set the reminder for 1 week early.
    A lot less butt hurt to be had, and you aren't relying on anyone else to remind you.

    Pay the $850, don't go to court (you've be charged court costs), and learn the lesson for nest time.

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