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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 3 Hansard (26 May) . . Page.. 548 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Much was made of the Australian Law Reform Commission report of 1988 on sentencing policy. That report is now 10 years old. That report reflected a state of affairs 10 years ago, which, you would have to concede from looking at the statistics on crime in this community, was very different from that of today. It also needs to be noted that the report has almost universally been ignored by the law-makers of this country.

Mr Moore: Does that make it right?

MR HUMPHRIES: No, it does not make it right. Indeed, it is in good company in that respect, because there is a large number of Australian Law Reform Commission reports which have been ignored. So, perhaps it is not exceptional in any sense. But it needs to be noted, Mr Speaker, that no other jurisdiction has picked up the recommendations of the ALRC in 1988 - not one. Not even the Commonwealth, whose report it was, has picked up those recommendations. Even they, in their Crimes Act, retain provisions which preserve the common law - the common law, of course, being that the prevalence of offences is a factor which courts can, and should, take into account when passing sentence. Let us not put too much weight on a report which is now old, out of context and generally not reflected in the laws of any part of this country, except the ACT at the present time.

Mr Speaker, in that respect, Mr Stanhope and Mr Moore both made some fairly extraordinary statements about what courts may take into account. In particular, they made comments about the way in which they take into account other crimes in the community. Mr Stanhope said, for example - this was in a speech which he supposedly did not give, but I assure you that he did:

... it is not a sound criminal justice principle or sentencing principle to rely on the perceptions of local media, or of politicians, or of those within our community who do express concern about the prevalence of particular offences within the community. The so-called law and order push does exist.

Then he went on to make this rather extraordinary statement:

They -

that is, the judges and magistrates -

do not have an independent capacity, when they have a certain person before them, to determine whether or not their perception of the extent or the prevalence of a particular crime is matched by the statistics.

Mr Speaker, there is a fairly subtle form of judge bashing going on here.

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