Border force officials have been brought in to help crack down on a “small minority” of overseas licence holders who have been “fraudulently” nominating other drivers for offences, in a bid to dodge demerit points.
In some cases, the tactics identified by NSW officials have seen penalties issued to drivers who visited Australia but have already left or even to foreigners who have never set foot in the country.
The Australian Border Force (ABF) will help to end such a loophole and tighten the “weakness in the system”, the NSW government said on Friday.
The French Consulate in Sydney will also assist officials in introducing a stricter verification process for applying for a driver’s licence, after evidence revealed French nationals were using fake documents.
“There are more than six million law-abiding licence holders in NSW and on their behalf, we are showing zero tolerance for this tiny minority who have sought to exploit the system that allows the honest nomination of another driver,” NSW Minister for Roads John Graham said.
“I thank the Australian Border Force and the French Consulate for their assistance in tightening the net around this small clique of dedicated lawbreakers.”
French nationals were mainly found to be abusing the system, racking up more than 1,000 demerit points in some extreme cases.
This led officials to set up a taskforce, including Transport for NSW, NSW Police and Revenue NSW, which identified “widespread nominations” of other drivers on international licences.
Evidence of abuses of the demerit point system led to a taskforce being set up in NSW. Source: Getty / Alex Wang
According to Revenue NSW, 125,000 penalties carrying 256,000 demerit points were issued to drivers identified as “international drivers” between May 2022 and January this year.
“A review of those found that some drivers nominated to take the penalty were unknown to Australian authorities and may have had their details procured from the dark web,” the NSW government said.
“As many as 40,000 fitted this category.”
Other offences were nominated to those who hold international licences but were also Australian citizens or permanent residents — some of whom possess a separate Australian license, which is unaffected by taking points on their foreign licence.
The taskforce has suspended the licences of more than 50 repeat offenders who together accumulated more than 2,000 demerit points.
It has received help from the ABF to more quickly verify nominated drivers using their passport records.
In cases where they were not in Australia, the system will be able to more quickly put the fine and demerit points back to the person who falsely nominated someone else.
Anyone who is applying for a licence in NSW with French documents is also now having their paperwork checked, the NSW government said.
The taskforce is finalising its wider recommendations.
