Unofficially, the New South Wales (NSW) government has proposed that kids as young as 10 could be placed on ‘extended payment plans’ or forced to participate in unpaid work programmes in order to pay off hefty fines for violating Covid regulations. The state’s community legal centres are enraged by the announcement. Children lack the ability to pay or understand the enforcement mechanism, the organisations warned. According to an article in The Guardian, children in NSW between the ages of 10 and 17 have received close to 3,000 fines for failing to comply with the public health act; these fines are often for an astounding sum of $1000.
Speaking to Guardian Revenue NSW confirmed that Work and Development orders (WDOs) were utilised for persons under the age of 18 for Covid rule violations. However, it is not known how many kids were put on WDOs as a result of Covid violations or how old they were.
It seems that WDOs give members the option to reduce fines by taking part in unpaid employment, counselling, courses, or treatment programmes.
Community Legal Centres NSW was one of the legal organisations who wrote the premier earlier this year to request the elimination of Covid fines for kids between the ages of 10 and 17.
The organisations urged that warnings rather than fines be provided to the children and warned that the fines were disproportionately affecting underprivileged neighbourhoods.
The state government was spurred by this to formally announce its intention to use WDOs earlier this year.
What young person, especially one from a low-income neighbourhood, would have the resources to pay off such a cost or the mental capacity to understand the enforcement process, wondered Katrina Ironside, executive director of Community Legal Centres NSW.
‘Is the chief commissioner suggesting a 10-year-old get a job?’ questioned Ironside, adding ‘A child already living in poverty burdened with a debt they cannot pay further entrenches that poverty before they are even old enough to earn their own money.’
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