Queensland’s state-run debt collection agency is no longer chasing unpaid COVID-19 fines after it wrote off thousands of penalties originally worth millions of dollars.<\/p>\n
More than 4,000 COVID related infringements were referred to the State Penalties Enforcement Registry (SPER) for enforcement during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The outstanding value of the unpaid penalties came in at about $7.5 million, which included fees added on top by the debt collector.<\/p>\n
Among the fines referred to SPER included penalties for breaching border or public health directions initiated by the chief health officer.<\/p>\n
The state government has confirmed that SPER has now “finalised” all debts related to COVID fines.<\/p>\n
According to the Queensland Revenue Office (QRO), about $4.6 million of the original fines had either been “paid in full or in part”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thousands of fines related to COVID infringements were referred to the state-run debt collection agency SPER during the pandemic. (ABC News: Alice Pavlovic)<\/p>\n
But the QRO also confirmed about 2,160 fines valued at about $4.3 million were written off \u2014 although they noted debts could have been partially paid before they were written off.<\/p>\n
Since October 29, 2024, when the LNP won government, 1,178 fines valued at an original estimate of $3.7 million have been wiped.<\/p>\n
Prior to October 29, 2024, 289 debts valued at $559,903 were written off.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Treasurer David Janetzki said: “The government determined that five years after the pandemic began, it was time to move on and finalise all outstanding matters.”<\/p>\n
The QRO said debts could be written off for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n
This could include if the debtor had died, a penalised company had deregistered, or the debts were considered “uneconomical to recover”.<\/p>\n
“This is consistent with standard industry debt recovery practices,” the QRO said.<\/p>\n
Another 160 COVID-related fines values at about $400,000 were also withdrawn or recalled by the issuing authority.<\/p>\n
There were also 48 COVID-related penalties, valued at less than $100,000, that were resolved at least in part by a work and development order.<\/p>\n
$146.5m in debts written off<\/p>\n
Mr Janetzki’s office pointed out that SPER wrote off $146.5 million in debts in the last financial year, which included penalties not related to the pandemic.<\/p>\n
A Queensland government spokesperson said they were not permitted under law to publish debt write-off guidelines.<\/p>\n
They said this was to ensure “unscrupulous debtors” did not use the information to avoid paying what they owe.<\/p>\n
“Before writing off any debts, SPER undertakes data enrichment and verification processes in line with the guidelines,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
“All debts related to COVID-19 fines have been finalised.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Treasurer David Janetzki says five years on from the pandemic’s beginning, it was “time to move on”. (ABC News: Brigham Edgar)<\/p>\n
As of August this year, there were more than $1.24 billion in unpaid fines and penalties sitting on SPER’s books.<\/p>\n
In November last year, the NSW government announced it would withdraw and repay tens of thousands of fines issued during the pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queensland’s state-run debt collection agency is no longer chasing unpaid COVID-19 fines after it wrote off thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,147,115282,4880,13110,13735,94,701,15878,47798],"class_list":["post-178593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-covid","tag-covid-pandemic","tag-covid-19","tag-debt","tag-fines","tag-qld","tag-queensland","tag-queensland-government","tag-sper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}