Penalty unit
Australian standard used to compute penalties for breaches of law
A penalty unit (PU) is a standard amount of money used to compute penalties for many breaches of law in Australia at both the federal, and state and territory level. Fines are calculated by multiplying the value of a penalty unit by the number of units prescribed for the offence. For example, if an offence was committed in New South Wales worth 100 units, the fine would be 100 × $110 = $11,000.
Prior to the introduction of penalty units, fines and other charges were usually prescribed in terms of ordinary money. However, the effects of inflation meant that originally substantial penalties eventually lost their worth. Frequent amendment of the many laws and regulations dealing with pecuniary penalties would be a very time-consuming process. Penalty units provide a quick and simple way to adjust many different fees and charges.
Values
The different jurisdictions that make up Australia each set their own value of a penalty unit. The value as well as the manner and frequency of adjusting that value differ between jurisdictions.
“Penalty unit” enters the record as australian standard used to compute penalties for breaches of law. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Penalty, unit and Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6641506. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Penalty unit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.