In the most recent Federal Budget, the Government announced that as of 31 July 2015, the value of all Commonwealth penalty units will increase from AUD170 to AUD180.

Rather than state a specific dollar penalty in the Act itself, most Commonwealth legislation instead express the amount payable in penalty units (for example, the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth), Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) and Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), all express maximum penalties in penalty units). As a result of this increase, an offence which had a maximum penalty of 10,000 penalty units will increase from AUD1.7 million to AUD1.8 million.

The Government is also intending to index penalty units to the Consumer Price Index on an ongoing basis. It is proposed that indexation will occur every three years with the first change to take effect on 1 July 2018.