Today in Parliament, Abigail secured multiple amendments and spoke in support of the Fines Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 as a modest step toward fairness and hardship protections, while urging stronger, systemic reforms to address the disproportionate impact of fines and debt on vulnerable people amid worsening economic inequality and cost-of-living pressures.
Abigail said:
As The Greens spokesperson for Treasury and finance, I contribute to debate on the Fines Legislation Amendment Bill 2025. Financial hardship and distress have a profound and lasting impact on many individuals in our community. The constant stress and anxiety that is experienced because of financial hardship is enormous. It is made ever more distressing by soaring cost-of-living pressures and the worsening housing crisis. Financial distress disproportionately impacts those in our communities who have already been made vulnerable by systemic injustice and inequality, including victim-survivors of domestic and family violence, people affected by natural disasters, people with disability, First Nations peoples, people experiencing homelessness or housing stress, renters, people experiencing mental health distress and people experiencing substance addiction.
Economic inequality is rising at an alarming rate and is beyond extreme levels. People in this country are being pushed further into poverty every single day. More people are being forced to make impossible choices between daily essentials like food, rent and health care. They are in a near-constant state of worry and stress about meeting their most basic needs. That is the product of government decisions, made over successive years, which have failed to address the drivers of economic inequality and poverty. The bill is one small part of the Government's broader agenda to improve our fines system. However, we are yet to see any reforms that tackle the broader issues of financial hardship, including the disproportionate and severe impact of fines and debt on individuals experiencing hardship, the increasing number of people on work and development orders, and the significant number of people who should have their fines waived because of hardship but have not.
I turn now to the contents of the bill. The Fines Legislation Amendment Bill seeks to introduce changes to the way individuals can contest their fine in court, ensuring that individuals are notified of their right to apply for a review. It changes the composition of the Hardship Review Board and expands its remit to include advising the Government on policy reforms. Schedule 1 to the bill amends the Fines Act 1996 to introduce a 21-day period for individuals to withdraw their court election, in the instance that they elect to contest their fine in court and then decide against proceeding in that way. The intention is to provide administrative fairness by allowing individuals to seek legal advice and potentially reconsider their decision to contest a fine in court.
Currently, the absence of such a grace period means that individuals are often locked into a costly court process that they cannot get out of once they elect to contest their fine in court. An individual will be able to withdraw their election only once for each penalty notice. These provisions provide that after electing to have a fine determined by a court, the Commissioner of Fines Administration must delay the issuing of a court attendance notice for at least 21 days. The commissioner must notify the individual that they have the ability to withdraw their election, as well as the date on which the amount due under the penalty notice must be paid if they withdraw. In her second reading speech, the Minister clarified that those provisions will apply if the individual elects to go to court after receiving the penalty notice or the penalty reminder notice.
Schedule 3 to the bill amends the Taxation Administration Act 1996 to require the chief commissioner to notify an individual of their right to apply to the board for the review of a decision by the chief commissioner to not extend the time for payment of tax by the individual. The bill amends the State Debt Recovery Act 2018 to provide that the Hardship Review Board must include two non-government members. Schedule 2 [3] prescribes that those individuals must have the qualifications or experience prescribed by the regulations, and each will be appointed by the Minister for a term of two years. Currently, the board is composed of the Secretary of the Department of Customer Service, the Secretary to the Treasury and the Secretary of the Department of Communities and Justice.
According to the Minister's second reading speech, the two new board members are intended to bring "lived experience, expertise from community organisations or independent voices that can strengthen decision‑making", to "enhance the diversity and independence of the board". The Hardship Review Board is established under the State Debt Recovery Act 2018 as a statutory body that provides an avenue for review. It acts as the appeal mechanism for hardship decisions by Revenue NSW, which provides secretariat support to the board. The Auditor-General's review of Revenue NSW's administration of hardship assistance, published in October 2025, pointed out that while the Hardship Review Board is promoted on its website as an independent mechanism, the State Debt Recovery Act 2018 does not require it to be independent of Revenue NSW. The Auditor‑General asserted, "It is incorrect to describe the Hardship Review Board as independent of Revenue NSW".
I urge the Government to address those concerns and either take action to establish the board as a genuinely independent body or stop referring to it as independent in public communications. It is misleading and inaccurate. I note the particular impact it could have on individuals experiencing financial hardship, who are doing everything they can to have their fines waived or reduced, if they are made to believe that the board is a genuinely independent body. There are already a number of barriers for individuals experiencing financial hardship, and the bureaucracy of decision-making bodies is too often incredibly inaccessible for many vulnerable individuals in our community. Schedule 2 [5] to the bill empowers the Hardship Review Board to advise the Minister on policy reform concerning hardship relating to fines, State debt and taxation laws. Those provisions also require the board to report prescribed information for each financial year to the Minister and publish it on the Revenue NSW website.
The Greens will move amendments in the Committee stage to further strengthen the composition and transparency of the Hardship Review Board by ensuring that it adequately represents the people in our community that it is designed to advocate and make decisions for. I thank the Minister and her office for engaging with us collaboratively and in good faith on our amendments and in relation to the bill. I urge the Government to build on these reforms and take bolder, stronger action to tangibly improve the lives of individuals in our communities who are doing it tough and experiencing financial hardship, which is primarily because of the irresponsible policy decisions of this Government and previous governments that have pushed more people further into poverty and economic inequality. The Greens support the bill.
Abigail went on to secure the following 3 amendments to the bill:
No. 2 Non-government members of Hardship Review Board
Page 6, Schedule 2. Insert after line 22—
[3A] Section 67(1A)
Insert after section 67(1)—
(1A) At least one of the non-government members appointed under subsection (1)(d) must have experience of having worked in the community welfare or social services sector assisting individuals in relation to financial hardship matters.
No. 3 Publication of prescribed information by Hardship Review Board
Page 6, Schedule 2[5], line 41. Omit "NSW." Insert instead—
NSW, and
(c) table the prescribed information for the previous financial year in each House of Parliament.
No. 4 Publication of prescribed information by Hardship Review Board
Page 7, Schedule 2[5], line 9. Omit "reviewed." Insert instead—
reviewed, and
(d) the number of applications received by the Hardship Review Board.
Amendment No. 2 seeks to make sure that at least one of the new non-government members appointed to the Hardship Review Board under new section 67 (1) (d) must have relevant, demonstrated experience of working in the community, welfare or social services sector, assisting individuals in relation to financial hardship matters. For example, that could include someone who has worked or is currently working in community legal centres, supporting individuals experiencing financial distress. As it stands, the bill proposes that the new members must have qualifications or experience prescribed by the regulations. Our amendment strengthens that to make it explicit in the legislation that at least one member must have experience working with people experiencing financial hardship, so that the individuals whom the board is intended to represent are adequately represented in the board's composition. That lived expertise is so vital in bureaucratic spaces like this board and simply cannot be replaced. I thank the Minister's office for engaging collaboratively with us on this amendment in particular.
Amendment No. 3 seeks to require the prescribed information about the Hardship Review Board to be tabled in Parliament annually. Currently the information is only required to be published on Revenue NSW's website, but we believe that it being tabled in Parliament provides that information with more of an elevated status and oversight from this Parliament.
Amendment No. 4 expands the list of prescribed information to be supplied by the Hardship Review Board to include the number of applications it receives. That would make sure we capture the number of applications that are received by the board but not reviewed. I commend the amendments to the Committee.
Read the debate in Hansard here and here.
5 February 2026