So a very good Chinese friend has been working in Australia, specifically in Melbourne for the past 3 months.
He’s been messaging me about how to integrate more into Australian life and he’s one of the few Chinese that’s actively been trying to get involved, so I’m very happy for him. Like drinking choice craft brews, meeting the locals, trying out anything is suggest, like getting a good old meat pie / curry pie or whatever.
But I contacted me about a couple of weeks ago because when he was driving his Hertz rented car and got stopped and given a fine from the Victorian police for ‘driving without a license’
The fine was completely inappropriate but I told him it didn’t really matter because the general rule of thumb is that you’ve got 24 hours to present your license, to avoid the fine.
I told him, go down to the police office, take in your passport, your Chinese license with the translation, your international driving permit (he actually has one, its not just his Chinese license) and the fine slip that he was given at the time.
That’s exactly what he did,…he was made to fill out a form…oh and by the way, his English is quite decent, and he gave over all the information and submitted it.
He was then send a letter to say that they acknowledge that he had filed a challenge to the infringement notice and that it was currently under review.
Then 2 weeks later he was sent this letter of notification in the mail to say that his Infringement notice was valid and that an Official Warning Notice would not be acceptable. That being stated, he wouldn’t be able to challenge it further with the police and he could escalate it ‘if you wish to dispute this Infringement Notice you can elect to have it heard in front of the Magistrates Court’
What the hell?
This is all because he forgot to bring his license with him when he went out to get some lunch.
Yet, he DOES actually have a license… he just forgot it.
Now, I’ve done some research online and most people in this situation, although they ARE Australian citizens, the fine in Victoria was around 150dollars… which is still pretty steep.
But for my friend that is Chinese and forgot his license?
777 AUD. What the hell?
That is a ridiculous amount of money.
Especially for not really doing anything wrong.
We were both astounded by this so I decided to run it by a couple of Australian friends, to which they all said this amount was way too high, but still proceeded to give me some reference material about fines for Victorian roads.
I even spoke to one of my brother’s friends who recently became a Police Officer in the West Australian Police, and he said to check out: 201415ActRegulationsFinesandPenaaltiesRegister
So from that document these are the possible traffic guidance laws that would determine a fine.
Now the biggest one IS indeed 738 AUD, and that’s from 2015, which means the 2017 one could be 777 dollars. But is that really what happened?
I would take a guess that Mr B Bryne just was being a dick, and decided to hand out the maximum fine possible because my friend was Chinese.
Other reference material that we researched as well as the newly anointed West-Australia cop, said that we should check out the notes of the that the officer on scene wrote on the Infringement notice so that we could see what he used to justify this huge amount of a fine.
https://billvasiliadis.com/2013/03/11/what-happens-if-i-get-caught-driving-without-a-licence/
See, nothing. There’s just ‘unlicensed driving’ for which this isn’t actually true if the person has a license but forgot to bring it.
I even went through several times with my friends to check that that’s ALL he was doing. I asked if was also speeding or did he talk back to the officer or anything.
But nope, apparently there was a traffic stop on the highway, and all the cars were slowed down to a crawl, max going 40 km/h.
And for some reason, my friend brought his passport…which is strange, but not his license, so when asked for the license he said ‘oh sorry I left it at the office, but I have my passport’ for which he handed that over.
Then the police officer asked if he had his license at all, to which my friend said, ‘well yes, because I was able to rent this car, and you need a license to be able to do that. You can check with Hertz.’
I doubt he said that in a condescending way, it was just fact. And in truth, the police probably can check that information in their car systems, however I’m also guessing the policeman had some sort of messed up quota to meet, and giving out an insane fine to someone that didn’t deserve it, nor was it warranted…nor from what I can see is the actual fine amount was a way to get that quota, especially if it involved a young Chinese man.
That’s pretty screwed up to be honest.
Most of Australia from the way that I’ve seen it work, is about keeping the peace and basically making sure no one is being a dick head on the roads.
This kind of bullshit handed out by officers, especially when my friend has jumped through all the hoops to make sure he has followed up in the correct manner to challenge such an ‘infringement’ makes me lose faith in such a system.
So, my friend is now taking it to the Magistrates Court.
Although, he is Chinese, he is in Australian only to set up a warehouse for the Chinese company he is working for… so in 1.5 weeks’ time he will have to go back to China.
So what the hell happens then?
I really never thought this kind of bullshit happens in Australia…
We’ll see how it goes.
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