Unlike the rest of us, it seems people who work for the consulates of other countries in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) have diplomatic immunity when it comes to traffic fines.
According to The Epoch Times, staff of foreign embassies in Canberra routinely ignore demands to pay penalties for driving offences and currently owe the ACT government $1.3 million in unpaid traffic fines.
These fines range from around $200 for a parking ticket, $674 for illegally using a disabled space, and in some cases more than $2000 for offences including driving through a stop sign and speeding.
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As in most Australian states and territories, failure to pay a traffic fine by the due date in the ACT incurs a late fee, and then cancellation of your driver’s licence or the registration of the vehicle involved in the offence.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says all diplomatic and consular staff are required to pay all traffic and parking fines promptly, and driver’s licences held by mission and post staff and their dependents can be suspended if they rack up enough demerit points or unpaid fines.
In the ACT, the penalty for driving without a licence is a $7500 fine, six months in prison, or both, while driving an unregistered vehicle will currently set you back $3200.
But these ramifications apparently don’t concern diplomats in Australia, who have reportedly racked up unpaid traffic fines in the ACT for almost 30 years.
The oldest is said to date back to 1996, when someone from the Danish embassy exceeded the speed limit by less than 15km/h and failed to pay the $34 fine.
Staff from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are the worst offenders with a total of $106,584 owed, followed by Nepal ($82,452) and both Iraq and Malaysia, which each owe almost $52,000.
However, according to an ACT government database, the largest amounts are owed by “unknown embassies” and “relate to diplomatic persons or missions”, which have notched up $421,302 in fines, and to “de-identified missions” with three or fewer staff, which owe a total of $403,622.
The Epoch Times reports the six largest fines of $2412 have all been incurred by “unknown embassies” for speeding, and that the UAE embassy has accrued the highest number of expensive speeding tickets (13), at $2134 each.
The UAE also tops the list of the largest number of unpaid offences at 37, all bar two of which are red light camera offences, and all of which occurred in 2022.
At the other end of the scale, staff of the Chinese embassy have just one outstanding fine, issued last year and also for a red light camera infringement.
Exacerbating the total value of unpaid traffic fines incurred by consulate staff in Canberra is the fact penalties for most offences have increased in the ACT in recent times, as they have in most other states and territories.
But that doesn’t account for the fact the current $1.3 million figure is more than 2000 per cent higher than the $60,000 amount reportedly owed in 2019, suggesting that Canberra embassy staff are incurring – and not paying – traffic fines at a higher rate than ever.