There is no warning: A first offence counts as the first breach. The vehicle won’t be impounded, but a second defect notice within the relevant time period means risking the vehicle being impounded for seven days. Type 2 offences of the same nature (such as illegally modified vehicles) are retrospective. The proposed legislation amendments have been given the green light from the parliamentary committee charged with examining the legislation. Given the LNP majority, they will be passed into law. A spokesman from Police Minister Jack Dempsey’s office said that “law-abiding car enthusiasts have absolutely nothing to worry about” from the changes to the Police Powers and Responsibilities Act. However, motoring enthusiasts are concerned they will be swept into the "hoon" net with little-to-no recourse to have their case heard. Sharyn Littler, the president of the Queensland branch of the Australian Confederation of Motor Clubs, said it was offensive to assume that all drivers who modified their vehicles were "hoons".

"Whilst the intent of the majority of motoring enthusiasts is to modify their vehicles to improve safety and performance, the concern is there may be cases where motoring enthusiasts may be unintentionally breaking the law with a modification and potentially face having their vehicle impounded or confiscated," she said. Ms Littler said a primary concern was the "confusion and misinformation regarding what is legal and what is not legal in each state" because of "ever changing regulations". "There are far too many cases of motoring enthusiast’s vehicles being defected on the side of the road by police officers who do not have the qualifications regarding vehicle modifications," Ms Littler said. "You are being judged by police officers on the side of the road who are looking at something and saying 'I think that is illegal', when you can ring up all the different departments and jurisdictions and ask them a question about a legal modification one day and get an answer and then ring them up the next day and get a different answer. "We are not about driving illegally modified cars, we are not about having no rules. We just want the rules to become clearer. In the past if you have been defected for something, fair enough, you get defected, you cop it, you go and fix it and it is all okay.

"But now they have made it very severe. Now if you get defected, potentially, you can face having your vehicle impounded or confiscated." Ms Littler said motoring enthusiasts contributed to an $11 billion after-market industry and that it was a family friendly community that had been vilified by an ill-informed media and general public "who don’t understand". "We are already seeing signs that people are scared to go and build a new car because of the vilification," Ms Littler said. “Now, there is the risk people can lose their vehicles. It is only going to get worse.” Miles Brennan formed the Australian National Code of Practice (for construction and modification of light vehicles) Discussion Forum to help answer four-wheel driving and motoring enthusiasts questions regarding modifications based on legislation.

A national code of practice had been developed to help limit confusion between modification laws between states, but some states made their own changes while introducing the code, meaning a misalignment between states when it came to vehicle modifications. A Queensland Transport and Main Roads spokesman said that from May 1, "all new modification approvals will need to meet the requirements of the National Code". "The changes are not backdated, meaning if a modification that met the previous Queensland Code was approved, that approval is still valid," he said. "Any person operating a vehicle on Queensland’s roads must meet the Queensland Vehicle Standards. If a vehicle has been modified in a way that is not permitted in Queensland, the vehicle cannot be used on Queensland roads." Mr Brennan said there had been a missed opportunity to "harmonise" the laws across state borders.

"Each state has introduced its own interpretation of the guide," he said. "We rang the South Australian, Victorian and Queensland vehicle modification sections from each registration authority and we also rang the Queensland public hooning hotline, specifically asking if we were bring a vehicle from the Northern Territory with a four-inch total [suspension and tyres] lift, which they are [legally] able to do themselves, what would be the consequences of driving that vehicle into each different jurisdiction. "Not a single authority could say that they would be safe. They all stated that there was a good probability that the vehicle would be defected. "When we have laws that conflict and trap citizens, it’s unacceptable. If someone comes from another state into Queensland and their vehicle is identified as not meeting Queensland’s laws, they could be identified under the hoon law when all they have been doing is a touring holiday. "If these laws are not the same across the state, if the police are given this power just to judge it from the road side, it doesn’t matter if the government says 'if you don’t do anything wrong, you don’t need to worry', because you can be doing the wrong thing without realising it. It will impact on tourism."

Mr Brennan said drivers with modified vehicles were already "carrying pages and pages of information" to show police if they were pulled over, to prove their modifications were within the law, but feared that Queensland’s laws were about to make things worse. Loading "If motorists can be defected interstate, is their vehicle insurance still valid across jurisdictions?" he asked. "It's a significant concern." "And if all you are doing is just going for a holiday between states and there is a good probability you can be picked up and defected and under the Queensland law have that count as a Type 2 hooning offence, people will be avoiding this. They just won’t come."



