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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 3 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 625 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Commission, which is hardly a bunch of screaming lefties. The commission is made up of people from right across the spectrum, including legal aid. They deliberated and came up with a recommendation that we need to improve the law.

Mr Quinlan mentioned that some offences have gone up. Assaults have gone up by 7 per cent and sexual assaults, sadly, have gone up by 25 per cent. There is a difference between those offences and offences like burglary. In very rare instances will you see someone charged with those offences charged for another serious offence in the space of the few short months it takes them to get a hearing in court. It just does not happen. You can go through all the court statistics on that. I can count on one hand the number of instances of someone charged with assault being charged with a later assault. It is very rare. I do not think the Bail Act effectively applies to those types of offences, simply because of the very nature of those offences and the modus operandi of individuals who commit those offences. They tend to be charged and then dealt with. They are not repeat offenders like those who break and enter and commit burglary and robbery.

Labor should not apply their prejudices and their natural reluctance to accepting something as sensible as the Bail Act. Listen to your police and listen to the community. Again, I have some trepidation if you are looking at reviewing the Bail Act down the track. If you try to be objective, you might see how effective it is.

I do not have a drama with Mr Stanhope looking at sentencing, provided he does it properly. I am concerned to hear statements in relation to sentencing guidelines. He seems to dismiss the idea, unfortunately. He states that he does not want to fetter the judiciary. Sentencing guidelines are just that. They are guidelines developed by very senior judges. They are there to ensure that there is some way of achieving consistency, given that each case has some differences and given that there might be some exceptional circumstances. They are nothing like mandatory sentencing. They are guidelines to assist the judge. Judges and magistrates are human. Ask any solicitors or barristers in the ACT, New South Wales, Victoria or anywhere else, and they will tell you that there are members of the judiciary who have a reputation for being the hanging judge and others who have a reputation for giving a slap over the wrist with a wet tram ticket. Guidelines get away from that.

You have a great variety of sentences within the judiciary. Sentencing guidelines get them a lot more into kilter. The sentencing judge, magistrate or whoever it is still has the discretion to look at all the circumstances of the case and take into account anything unique. But if something is manifestly wrong either way, when the case is appealed to a superior court there are guidelines that assist that court.

It is commonsense. Yet the Attorney pooh-poohed it. I thought initially he was not going to and I was getting a bit hopeful that we might get some really good things out of this review, but then he seemed to dismiss that out of hand and state his reservations. I do not agree with his reservations. Sentencing guidelines do not fetter the judiciary. They are a way of achieving consistency and confidence in the community. That is crucially important. I have noticed over the years declining community confidence in our court system. Sentencing guidelines are one way of ensuring, at least in the criminal law system, that confidence can be regained because we can have much greater consistency.

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