COVID-19 fines four times more likely for African and Middle Eastern Australians

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People of African and Middle Eastern appearance were four times more likely to receive fines for breaching Victoria’s lockdown rules in 2020, when allowing for their percentage of the state’s population, according to a new report.

The report, to be released on Tuesday by Inner Melbourne Community Legal, also says Indigenous people accounted for more than 30 per cent of COVID fines in some regional Victorian towns such as Mildura, while almost 20 per cent of all fines issued by the officers from Collingwood police station were to First Nations peoples.

Victoria Police issued more than 37,000 fines for breaches of COVID public health orders in 2020.Credit: Getty

The report shows several police taskforces – including public transport, traffic and specialist crime operations – issued more than one-third of their COVID-19 fines in 2020 to people of African or Middle Eastern appearance.

The legal centre said the data, which it obtained through freedom-of-information requests, was evidence of racial profiling by Victoria Police, which emphatically denies the allegation.

A separate expert said these communities were more likely to face issues with bad communication and a lack of translated materials during lockdowns.

Michelle Reynolds, policy and advocacy director at Inner Melbourne Community Legal, said the report revealed certain ethnic communities were more likely to get caught because they were more likely to be questioned.

“This is because the data shows racialised people were more likely to be fined for offences that require questioning than clearly visible offences, such as not wearing a face mask,” Reynolds said.

“Chief Commissioner Shane Patton gave evidence to the Yoorrook Justice Commission and acknowledged, and I quote that: ‘As a result of systemic racism, racist attitudes and discriminatory actions of police have gone undetected, unchecked, unpunished or without appropriate sanctions’.

“The findings in this report are an example of the behaviour he described.”

A Victoria Police spokeswoman emphatically denied any racial profiling by its officers.

“Victoria Police rejects any suggestion that officers targeted specific ethnic groups for COVID-19 offences. This is simply not true,” the spokeswoman said.

Police officers issue a fine in August 2020 in Melbourne.Credit: Getty

The allegations of racial profiling and discrimination by some officers have prompted fresh calls for the Andrews government to introduce an independent police ombudsman to examine misconduct allegations against the force.

Inner Melbourne Community Legal is also demanding greater rigour and transparency in the collection of police data on people being questioned, searched, arrested and fined.

The report authored by Dr Tamar Hopkins was based on her freedom-of-information application made to Victoria Police for all COVID-related fines issued in 2020, including information about racial appearance, gender, age and local government area.

The force only handed over the data when Hopkins appealed about the FOI case to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in 2021.

More than 28,000 of the 37,405 fines issued in the first year of the pandemic included details of the person’s racial appearance as perceived by officers.

“People with North African and Middle Eastern and Sub-Saharan African ancestry make up about 5.03 per cent of the Victoria population,” Hopkins said in her report.

“Because they received 20.1 per cent of the total fines issued, we can state that they are approximately four times more likely to receive a fine than their proportion of the population would predict.”

The report also found Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people received 2.5 per cent of all fines issued by police in 2020, yet make up only 1 per cent of the state’s population.

Melbourne suburbs with a higher number of non-English-speaking households also received a higher proportion of fines, particularly on the city’s western and northern fringes, the report found.

An investigation by The Age in 2020 revealed that COVID-19 had spread most readily through the city’s west and north, where casual and temporary work was most prevalent, and English was often a second language.

Professor Kirsten McCaffery, the director of the Sydney Health Literacy Lab, said the issues for ethnic communities were exacerbated by muddled and, at times, contradictory communication by federal and state governments.

“The messaging was utterly inadequate for a long time for households that spoke a language other than English. That group of people were absolutely underserved during the pandemic,” McCaffery said.

She said Premier Daniel Andrews’ daily briefings were not translated into other languages for several months, which reflected the poor co-ordination between the state health department and the community.

In 2020, Victoria’s Crime Statistics Agency revealed First Nations communities and people born in South Sudan and Sudan were overrepresented in fines issued to those breaching public health orders.

Sudanese and South Sudanese people accounted for 5 per cent of the fines yet only make up 0.14 per cent of the Victorian population. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made up 4.7 per cent of the fines, despite making up just 0.8 per cent of the state’s population, according to CSA data.

A police spokeswoman insisted that officers had been “routinely reminded to take a consistent approach” to enforcement action during the lockdowns.

“Police were able to apply discretion, however, fines were issued for deliberate, blatant and obvious offences,” she said.

“As always, anyone who receives a penalty notice has the ability to request a review by Fines Victoria.”

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