Aussie
Speeding Fines
A
legal analysis of Mike Palmer's
ebook.
Barrister's legal advice:
"It's
a scam.
Don't waste your money on this useless
eBook"
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Analysis
of the First Letter
The
first letter, which can be
downloaded as a .doc file from
here, is as useful as a nursery
rhyme. There is barely a sentence in
the letter that makes legal sense. It
is totally misconceived in its
assumption that you can make demands of
the police to provide non-existent
information to you which they are not
under any obligation at law to provide
(even if the information existed). It
then makes the bizarre claim that the
consequence of non-compliance with your
demands is that the police have agreed
not to prosecute you. If that were
correct, then I could send you a letter
demanding you sell me your car for
$20.00 and unless you reply to me
within 28 days with proof of the
existence of Santa Clause, then we have
a deal and the car is mine... Good
grief!
Perhaps the intention of the first
letter is to distract the enforcement
agency (usually the police of the local
council) into trying to comply with
your demands in the faint hope that
they will be conned into believing that
compliance with those demands is a
precondition to enforcing the penalty.
It is not. All the enforcement agency
will do is continue to enforce the fine
in accordance with Part 4 and Parts 7
to 12 of the Infringements
Act (together with any resulting
demerit points and licence loss) unless
the offender exercises his or her
rights under either s.16 or s.64 of the
Infringements Act, or s.89A(4) Road
Safety Act 1986 in the case of licence
loss offences. Nowadays most
enforcement agencies are smart enough
to know this. They know that the law
allows two main options: (1) if you
object to the fine they can take you to
court where you can defend yourself, or
(2) if you fail to pay the fine, they
can have an enforcement order made
against you. Any other correspondence
from you will be considered by the
Traffic Camera Office and may have the
effect of delaying enforcement of the
fine but it is extremely unlikely to
result in your fine being cancelled,
dropped or avoided.
If you think that sending letters
like the one above will avoid legal
liability for an infringement notice
you are destined to be very
disappointed. I note that the first
letter is addressed to the police
member who issued the infringement
notice, as are all the follow-up
letters. The author does not seem to
realise that the police member who
issued the ticket has no role to play
in the process after the infringement
notice is issued. Once it is issued,
Civic Compliance and the Infringements
Court undertake all administrative
processes in respect of the
infringement. Objections are sent to
Civic Compliance. Sob stories are
handled by the Traffic Camera Office's
Penalty Review Board. Fines are
collected by Civic Compliance.
Defaulters are chased by Civic
Compliance and the Infringements Court.
The police member has no role to play.
He can not drop the fine even if he
wanted to. In practice he will withdraw
and cancel the fine only if he issues a
replacement fine or a charge and
summons. Importantly, he has no need to
go searching for irrelevant
documentation just because you ask him
to. The police member who issued the
ticket will almost never respond to
your correspondence. You will get a
letter in reply from the Traffic Camera
Office telling you to pay up. So
sending your follow-up letters to the
person who issued the infringement
notice is a waste of time. It will
merely dig you deeper and deeper into a
hole until you find you have dug so
deep you can not get out, and no one
cares that you are in there. The member
who issued the notice will not have any
role to play unless you lodge an
objection to the fine and ask to go to
court, in which case the police member
will file and serve a charge and
summons.
In any case, if you take your case
to court and rely solely on an
imaginary private settlement agreement
as your defence then you are certain to
lose. No Australian court has ever
accepted that such an agreement is
lawful or possible. Quite simply, even
if we assume that you have entered into
a private agreement with the police, by
law it is impossible to contract out of
criminal liability. In fact, to enter
into a contract with a police member
which purports to prevent that police
member from prosecuting you is an
offence called perverting, or
attempting to pervert, the course of
justice. If I am a police member
investigating you for an offence and I
sign an agreement with you in which I
promise not to file charges, this does
not prevent me or any other member of
the police from filing charges against
you for exactly the same offence. Only
the Director Of Public Prosecutions has
the power to grant someone immunity
from prosecution for a criminal
offence. The concept of a "private
settlement" is ridiculous.
You will also notice that the
proposed letters contain similar
verbiage to other lunatic letters which
can be found on the Internet, and also
terminology common in civil courts in
the United States but which have no
relevance in Australia:
- Letter
written to declare Texas an
independant republic
- Oregon
affidavit attempting to get out
of a traffic fine
Letter
to the tax Commissioner trying to
avoid tax.
Aussiespeedingfines.com also
publishes some pro-forma letters which
they recommend you should send to the
police if you want to blame (or if you
are unable to blame) someone else for
driving your vehicle at the time a
camera offence is detected (i.e. if you
want to pass the buck even though you
were the driver). I am aware of many
people who have sent these pro-forma
documents to civic compliance. The
letters are clearly a fiction and
expose the motorist to charges of
perjury or attempting to pervert the
course of justice if the matter ends up
in court. Drivers can be imprisoned for
doing this. The use of pro-formas or
fictional explanations to excuse
yourself from a speeding ticket is
dangerous and should not be undertaken
lightly. Sending such letters can
adversely affect your chances of
winning at court.
The first letter falsely implies
that use of a speed measuring device is
unlawful if the device has not been
certified under the National
Measurement Act. For decades this
argument has been tried and the courts
have consistently said that no law in
Australia imposes any obligation for
speed measuring devices to be so
certified. There are still people who
think they can win using this defence.
I know they can not. Some of my clients
faced with speeding charges have asked
me to run this defence. From my
experience in court and my legal
research I am confident that this
argument has no prospect of success.
Nearly every State Supreme Court or
Court of Appeal has handed down
decisions that reject this argument.
This
page explains more about the NMA
defence.
What the first letter says about the
Currency
Act is utter garbage. No
commentary needed. Just read the
legislation and laugh.
Site
Content
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The
aussiespeedingfines
strategy
- 3. The
First Letter
- 4.
Analysing the First
letter
- 5. The
Second Letter
- 6. Analysing
the Second letter
- 7. What
happens when you rely on the
letters
- 8. Who
operates
aussiespeedingfines.com?
- 9. Aussiespeedingfines
Exclusion Clauses
- 10. More
of Mike Palmer's legal
nonsense
- 11. Unlawfully
providing legal advice?
- 12. Terms
and conditions of this
website
View
all as a single page
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