Unpaid Fines in Western Australia: Fines Enforcement Registry, Payment Plans, WDP and Enforcement

The Fines Enforcement Registry (FER), part of Western Australia's Department of Justice, takes over collection of both unpaid infringement notices and unpaid court fines once either is referred to it, and anyone who has just received an infringement notice should pay it or elect a court hearing within 28 days, before the escalation process begins.

Information last verified on 27 September 2026 against the Fines, Penalties and Infringement Notices Enforcement Act 1994 (WA), its Regulations and the Fines Enforcement Registry's own guidance.

This page covers unpaid infringement notices and court fines in Western Australia only, under the Fines, Penalties and Infringement Notices Enforcement Act 1994 (WA) and its Regulations, verified 27 September 2026. It does not cover how much a specific traffic fine costs (see the penalty amounts link below), demerit points, or fines in any other state or territory.

Who handles unpaid fines in Western Australia

The Fines Enforcement Registry (FER), part of the Department of Justice under the Attorney General's portfolio, is the agency that collects unpaid fines in Western Australia once they are referred to it. FER does not issue infringements itself. The Prosecuting Authority, which can be WA Police, a local government, or a state department such as Transport WA, issues the original notice; FER's role begins once a fine is registered with it as overdue.

Two distinct tracks both eventually land at FER if they remain unpaid: infringement notices for offences such as speeding, parking and other regulatory breaches, and court fines, which are pecuniary sums imposed by a judicial officer.

Receiving a fine

An infringement notice gives 28 days from the notice date to either pay in full or elect to have the matter heard by a magistrate, using an Application for a Court Hearing, Form FER001. If the notice is neither paid nor elected within that window, the Prosecuting Authority issues a final demand notice, giving a further 28 days. If that also lapses, the infringement is registered with the Fines Enforcement Registry, further fees are added, and FER issues an Order to Pay or Elect to go to Court.

A court fine, meaning a pecuniary sum imposed by a judicial officer, is registered with FER the day after the fine or order is given. If it remains outstanding 28 days after it was imposed, the offender must either pay it or apply for a Time to Pay Order under section 32. If neither step is taken, enforcement action under Parts 3 and 4 of the Act can begin, followed by a Notice of Intention to Enforce that warns of licence suspension.

Vehicle registration and licensing infringements administered through Transport WA's DoTDirect system follow the same 28 day, election, final demand and FER referral pattern. Payment extensions and direct debit instalment agreements through DoTDirect are available to individual customers only, not to organisations.

FER's confirmed payment channels are: credit card online, for amounts between $10 and $10,000, processed within one business day, or two business days if paid after 5pm AEST; BPAY, using biller code 48249; phone, on 1300 276 468, available 24 hours; in person at any Magistrates Court; direct debit, using Form FER003; Centrelink Centrepay, with a minimum of $25 per fortnight, using Form FER004; and mail, by cheque or money order.

Contesting a fine

The Act's way to contest an infringement in Western Australia is to elect to have the matter dealt with by a court, which, after the infringement is registered, stays available under section 21 until any part of the amount is paid, a time to pay order is made, or an enforcement warrant is issued, even if the due date on the notice of intention to enforce has passed. Once an enforcement warrant is issued, that right to elect is lost, and the notice of intention to enforce is required to warn of this under section 18(5)(da).

Legal Aid WA and the Aboriginal Legal Service advise that if a licence suspension order or an enforcement warrant was made without the person's knowledge, an application can be made to the court to have it set aside; sections 101 and 101A (licence suspension orders) and 101AA (enforcement warrants on infringements, applied for within 14 days of the Sheriff's notice) allow this where the person received none of the required notices, and a refused application cannot be repeated.

For traffic infringements issued after 7 October 2024, the Department of Transport, not WA Police, handles processing. It offers a review where special or extraordinary circumstances led to the alleged offence (for police and camera issued infringements), a way to identify the responsible driver if you were not driving (do not pay the notice in that case), one payment extension per notice, or a direct debit instalment arrangement of 4, 6 or 10 instalments depending on the amount, 28 days each, for individuals only. Once you pay in full, or pay the first instalment, you can no longer contest the infringement in court, identify another driver, apply for an extension, dispute or transfer demerit points, or apply for a review. A missed instalment leads to a final demand under section 14A of the Act.

Hardship and the Work and Development Permit

Western Australia overhauled its hardship provisions with the Fines, Penalties and Infringement Notices Enforcement Amendment Act 2020, with most of the hardship and Work and Development Permit provisions commencing 29 September 2020.

Section 4 sets out the governing principle: imprisonment for failure to pay a fine is an enforcement measure of last resort, and an offender experiencing hardship affecting their capacity to pay, or to perform the requirements of a work and development order, should not be imprisoned only because they failed to pay a fine. Section 4A defines hardship non-exhaustively to include financial hardship, having been subjected or exposed to family violence under the Restraining Orders Act 1997, mental illness under the Mental Health Act 2014, disability under the Disability Services Act 1993, homelessness, or alcohol or drug use problems.

The Work and Development Permit (WDP) scheme, under sections 46A to 46N, is a partnership between the Department of Justice, Legal Aid WA and the Aboriginal Legal Service of WA. It applies only to court fines: the Department of Justice states that only court fines are eligible, and an application can be made only after a notice of intention to enforce has issued for the fine (section 46C(2)). An unpaid infringement notice cannot be worked off under a WDP. Sponsors can be individuals or organisations, including government agencies, health practitioners, sole traders and not for profit agencies. Eligibility is simply experiencing hardship under section 46B; for the financial hardship limb specifically, the hardship must affect the person's capacity to pay. An approved sponsor applies on the offender's behalf with a written eligibility assessment, and the Registrar must rely on that assessment unless there are reasonable grounds not to. Approved activities include unpaid work, medical or mental health treatment, education, vocational or personal development courses, drug or alcohol treatment, and, only for an offender who has not reached 25 years of age, a mentoring programme under section 46A(e).

For a court fine whose notice of intention to enforce due date has passed, the Registrar can also issue an order to attend for work and development, which can lead to a work and development order supervised by a community corrections officer (sections 47 to 52). This is a separate, Registrar initiated work route from the WDP.

A Fine Expiation Order, under sections 52C to 52J, is a different instrument from the Work and Development Permit. For a registered court fine, it lets an offender who is or has been in custody, for any reason and not necessarily for this fine, and who the Registrar is satisfied has no means to pay and no personal property that could be seized (section 52F), discharge fine liability day for day at a daily expiation amount of $250 (Regulations r 6BAAA) for the period of custody. Section 52D(2) makes clear it does not authorise the offender to be held in custody; it is a credit against an existing custodial period, not a new order. This is unrelated to South Australia's expiation notice, which is South Australia's own term for what Western Australia calls an infringement notice; the shared word describes two different mechanisms and should not be read across the two states.

The Regulations may also designate remote areas, and a licence suspension order cannot be made against an individual whose last known address is in a remote area under section 19(2A)(a); the notice of intention to enforce must say so. A Time to Pay Order, a Stay of Execution against an already issued enforcement warrant, and a Means Test on Form FER008 are the general hardship and instalment tools that sit outside the WDP scheme. For an infringement, making a time to pay order ends the right to elect a court hearing (section 21(1)(c)).

The Act applies special provisions to a young person as defined in the Young Offenders Act 1994, subject to that Act's sections 63 to 65C under section 29(2), and the Registrar must keep a record of outstanding amounts payable by young persons and notify default to the court that imposed the fine under section 10B.

What happens if you do not pay

Once a fine is registered as overdue, Western Australia's enforcement ladder runs as follows.

A Notice of Intention to Enforce issues after the order to pay or elect (infringements) or after the 28 day payment period (court fines), with a due date no earlier than 28 days after it is given, under section 18(4).

A Licence Suspension Order can follow under section 19. The Registrar may suspend the person's driver's licence or a vehicle licence (one of these per order), and the order will generally not be lifted until the unpaid amount is paid. It cannot be made if the person's last known address is in a remote area, and it runs concurrently with any disqualification a court has separately imposed. An individual can ask the Registrar to cancel the order, or give information before it is made, if it would cut off the means of urgent medical treatment or the main way of earning income, or seriously hinder family or personal responsibilities (sections 20A and 44A, Form FER005).

An Enforcement Warrant under Part 7 is issued by the Registrar to the Sheriff of Western Australia, who is authorised to wheel clamp the vehicle, remove its registration plates, suspend or cancel the vehicle licence, seize and sell personal property, lodge a memorial, which acts like a caveat, on land or real property, and issue a garnishee order on wages under Division 6B or on a bank account under sections 95V to 95ZD. Once an enforcement warrant issues, the right to elect a court hearing is lost.

For court fines only, a warrant of commitment, meaning imprisonment in default, still exists in the Act; Part 3 gives no imprisonment route for an unpaid infringement notice. The Registrar can apply to the Magistrates Court for a warrant of commitment inquiry only once an order to attend for work and development or a work and development order has failed and the Registrar is satisfied that all applicable enforcement action has been taken and further action is inapplicable or unlikely to recover the amount, or after an order from an earlier inquiry was breached (section 52N). At the inquiry the court can instead order a time to pay order or an order to attend for work and development, or write off all or part of the fine (section 52S). Its term is the shorter of the amount owed divided by $250 per day (Regulations r 6BAA), rounded down, or the maximum term of imprisonment available for the original offence. It runs concurrently with any other imprisonment being served, and is reduced pro rata for any partial payment made after the warrant issues. Section 4 frames imprisonment as a last resort and states that a hardship affected offender should not be imprisoned only for failing to pay a fine, but the mechanism itself has not been abolished. The prescribed daily rate is $250 (Regulations r 6BAA), and the Fine Expiation Order daily amount is also $250 (r 6BAAA).

Part 6 of the Act, covering reciprocal enforcement of fines imposed in another state or territory, is expressly limited to fines imposed on bodies corporate, meaning companies. Nothing in those sections extends that reciprocal scheme to individuals. For an individual's court fine, section 54 instead lets the Registrar act as a fine enforcement officer under Part 7 of the Commonwealth Service and Execution of Process Act 1992, which lets a court fine be registered in, and enforced by, another state where the offender appears to live (sections 112 and 113 of that Act). That route covers fines imposed by courts, not unpaid infringement notices.

Current fees

Western Australia's enforcement and administrative fees are set out in Schedule 2 to the Regulations and are updated by amending regulations, most recently from 1 July 2026. The figures below took effect 1 July 2026 under SL 2026/114.

Schedule 2 does not set a fee for lodging or withdrawing a memorial on land; the Regulations prescribe only the forms for those steps.

Western Australia does not use a single indexed penalty unit figure the way some other jurisdictions do. Modified penalties for specific offences, such as speeding or parking, are set as dollar amounts fixed in the offence creating law or regulations rather than derived from a unit multiplier. Anyone wanting to know how much a specific traffic offence costs should check the penalty amount for that offence directly, since it is not calculated from the enforcement fees on this page.

Paying or disputing an infringement notice is a separate matter from any demerit points the offence adds to a driver's licence; demerit points are recorded under the road traffic laws. Under section 26, if a road traffic infringement reaches an order to pay or elect, the person is taken to be convicted of the offence for the provisional (P plate) licence cancellation rule in section 16(1)(a) of the Road Traffic (Authorisation to Drive) Act 2008, and the order to pay or elect is also the point at which an unpaid infringement is treated as dealt with for demerit points (section 40(1A) of that Act).

Recent reforms

The Road Traffic Legislation Amendment (Infringement Management Reform) Act 2024, assented 14 May 2024, commenced 7 October 2024 and amended the Act's definitions in section 3, the notice of intention to enforce content requirements in section 18, the election provisions in section 21 and other Part 3 provisions. It added the traffic infringement instalment track (sections 14A and 17A) and section 26, under which letting a road traffic infringement reach an order to pay or elect counts as a conviction for the provisional licence cancellation rule in the Road Traffic (Authorisation to Drive) Act 2008.

The Statutes (Repeals and Minor Amendments) Act 2025, assented 25 September 2025, commenced 26 September 2025 and made an editorial amendment to section 89 only.

The Regulations' Schedule 2 fee schedule was most recently updated by SL 2026/114, commenced 1 July 2026. No pending Western Australia bill on fines enforcement was identified for this page.

Related reading

Unsure how much a specific offence costs before it reaches enforcement? See Speeding Fines in Australia for penalty amounts by state, or Mobile Phone Detection Cameras in Australia for camera offence fines. For how an infringement affects your licence separately from its fee, see Western Australia Demerit Points or look up an offence on the Australia Demerit Points Lookup for WA. For how fines enforcement compares across every Australian state and territory, see the Australia Fines hub.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I do not pay a Western Australia infringement within 28 days?

The Prosecuting Authority issues a final demand notice giving a further 28 days. If that also lapses, the infringement is registered with the Fines Enforcement Registry, further fees are added, and FER issues an Order to Pay or Elect to go to Court.

Can I be sent to prison for an unpaid fine in Western Australia?

Only for a court fine. A warrant of commitment for imprisonment in default still exists under the Act for court fines, but an unpaid infringement notice cannot lead to imprisonment under it. The Magistrates Court issues it only after a warrant of commitment inquiry, generally once a work and development order route has failed and other enforcement has been exhausted. The term is capped at the shorter of the amount owed divided by $250 a day or the maximum term for the original offence. Section 4 frames imprisonment as a last resort, and says a person in hardship should not be imprisoned only for failing to pay, but the mechanism has not been abolished.

What is a Work and Development Permit in Western Australia?

It is a court fine only scheme under sections 46A to 46N of the Act that lets an approved sponsor apply, once a notice of intention to enforce has issued for the fine, on behalf of an offender experiencing hardship to satisfy the fine through unpaid work, treatment, education or, for offenders under 25, a mentoring programme, instead of payment. Unpaid infringement notices are not eligible. Legal Aid WA and the Aboriginal Legal Service help connect people with a sponsor.

Is a Western Australia Fine Expiation Order the same as a South Australia expiation notice?

No. Western Australia's Fine Expiation Order lets a person who is or has been in custody, and who has no means to pay, discharge a registered court fine day for day against that custody. South Australia's expiation notice is simply South Australia's name for an infringement notice. The two terms share a root word but describe unrelated concepts.

Can the Fines Enforcement Registry take money from my wages or bank account?

Yes, once an enforcement warrant has issued. The Sheriff of Western Australia can issue a garnishee order on wages under Division 6B or on a bank account under sections 95V to 95ZD of the Act.

Does an unpaid Western Australia fine follow me if I move interstate?

A court fine can. Section 54 lets the Registrar use Part 7 of the Commonwealth Service and Execution of Process Act 1992, under which a court fine can be registered and enforced in the state where the person appears to live. That route covers court fines, not unpaid infringement notices, and the Act's separate Part 6 reciprocal provisions apply only to fines imposed on bodies corporate, meaning companies.

What if my last known address is in a remote area of Western Australia?

A licence suspension order cannot be made against an individual whose last known address is in a remote area under section 19(2A)(a), and the notice of intention to enforce must state this.