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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1202 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

member of the Australian Federal Police Association, who attended three lengthy meetings to go through the legislation and make recommendations.

My bill does a number of things but, specifically, it can be divided into four categories. First, it introduces legislation to enable our new Court of Appeal to issue sentencing guidelines and guideline judgments. Second, the bill brings the maximum penalties for offences in our Crimes Act into line with New South Wales. In fact, in 40 matters, sentences have been increased to bring them into line with their New South Wales equivalents.

I should point out that-if anyone reads this legislation and checks it with the New South Wales act-not all the offences are absolutely identical. In most cases it has been easy to simply lift a New South Wales matter and transfer it to the ACT as far as penalty is concerned, although in some instances that has been harder to do. In some aspects, New South Wales, for example, has more offences, and more specific offences, than the ACT. However, in my bill I have tried to replicate their maximum penalties as faithfully as possible for either the same offence or similar offences.

Third, my bill introduces minimum non-parole periods, similar to those introduced recently in New South Wales by Premier Bob Carr. Fourth, the bill removes impediments to proper sentencing from our ACT courts and introduces several new offences which operate in New South Wales but not in the ACT-namely, three offences in relation to assaulting police, and an offence in relation to car-jacking.

My bill enables the Court of Appeal, on its own initiative or at the request of the Attorney-General, to give a guideline judgment which must be taken into account by courts when sentencing offenders. The guideline judgment may be given separately or in any proceedings the Court of Appeal considers appropriate. The section in the bill sets out how a guideline judgment can be given and enables the Attorney to request a guideline judgment from the Court of Appeal.

Guideline judgments and sentencing guidelines have been working very well in New South Wales for a number of years. Now that we have our own Court of Appeal, I believe it is essential that it has the ability to do this. I believe no reasonable person could possibly complain about a procedure such as that listed in this part of my bill.

The second part of my bill deals with bringing ACT maximum penalties into line with penalties in the New South Wales Crimes Act. I think it is very important to have consistency between jurisdictions. That is especially important between the ACT and New South Wales, given that we are an island within New South Wales, and given that a number of our offenders come down the highway from Sydney. It is not at all desirable for the ACT to be seen as a soft touch. Also, I have heard those opposite say-as we also said on many occasions when in government-that it is desirable to be consistent, wherever possible, with our neighbour across the border-for obvious reasons-in all manner of things. This is especially important in sentencing, with regard to the criminal law.

In this area of the bill, all the maximum penalties for rape have been increased, with the current maximum penalty under section 51 (2)-our most serious offence of rape-being

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