Queensland already had the toughest anti-hoon laws in the nation and Logan City added to these when they developed a Hooning Action Plan through an Anti‐Hooning Task Force. Now the laws are even tougher.
It will now be an offence to be a spectator at a group hooning event and it will also be an offence to organise or promote a group hooning event.
This will include the filming or photographing of hooning for the above purposes.
And it will be an offence to possess certain items used to facilitate group hooning events, for example, false number plates.
The Logan City Council Taskforce was created in August 2020 and has allowed council to increase support to the Queensland Police Service (QPS) in the fight against this anti-social activity.
Cr Heremaia, lead of the taskforce, said following the first meeting in 2020, the taskforce had identified five priority areas to address in relation to hooning.
“These priorities have now formed the basis of an Action Plan that is bringing everyone to the table to fight this ongoing issue in the community,” he said.
The five key areas are: Advocacy, Enforcement, Education, Technology and Target hardening.
The council taskforce identified the online process of reporting hooning was confusing and based on this advice, council provided support to QPS to make improvements to the online reporting of hooning.
Assistant Commissioner Ben Marcus said the changes would make it easier and more efficient for Queenslanders to report hooning-related offences through Policelink’s online reporting platform.
“Our online form has been enhanced so that is simple to use and allows members of the community to upload and provide any photos or videos of the offence captured,” Assistant Commissioner Marcus said.
“This will increase our capacity to prosecute offenders for these kinds of offences while also making the reporting process more streamlined for those wanting police investigations in their neighbourhoods.
“We know that our community does not accept nor tolerate dangerous driving and hooning behaviour and we will continue to use this new progression in the online reporting space to our advantage to police this kind of anti-social and life-endangering behaviour.”
The cost of road trauma in Queensland is significant with the Queensland Road Safety Strategy estimating that the economic cost of road trauma in 2020 was $6 billion dollars and accounts for almost 15 per cent of hospital admissions.
That is, to say nothing of personal costs to Queenslanders who are directly affected by the tragedy of a death or by life changing disability caused by injuries on our roads.
Queensland now has a comprehensive suite of laws targeting hoon drivers, including impoundment or forfeiture of motor vehicles and deeming legislation, which puts the onus on the owner of a vehicle caught hooning to prove they weren’t the driver.
With the additional laws now passed by Parliament, Queensland has the most stringent anti-hooning framework in the nation.
