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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1203 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

increased from 20 years to life. That is for what is called rape in the first degree. Effectively, it is rape in company, and one could describe it as pack rape. The increase to life imprisonment is something that recently happened in New South Wales. That was of immense benefit to District Court judge, Justice Finnane, when making his landmark decision.

Mr Speaker, hopefully in the ACT we will never see anything as horrible as a rape like that which occurred in New South Wales, but it is important to copy New South Wales with regard to this most heinous of crimes and make sure there is an appropriate maximum penalty. Incidentally, that applies not only in New South Wales, where they have life for that type of rape, but also to a number of other jurisdictions.

The penalty for manslaughter will be increased from 20 years to 25 years, again in line with New South Wales. Interestingly, it is in line with what the current Labor government is suggesting in the industrial manslaughter bill which is before the Legal Affairs Committee at present.

The penalty for wounding, under section 51, has been increased to 15 years, to bring it into line with New South Wales. The penalty for culpable driving, which has attracted some criticism in recent times from a number of victims, has increased from seven years to a maximum of 14.

The penalties for a number of other offences will rise too, including that of abducting a young person, which will rise from five to 10 years. The penalty for false accounting-a white collar crime-will rise from seven to 10 years, again bringing us into line with New South Wales.

Sentencing in sections 27 and 28 of the Crimes Act has also been adjusted to bring it into line with New South Wales. In certain instances, there has been some extrapolation there. One offence has been removed-section 28 (2) (c). That has been replaced by its New South Wales counterpart as a new section 28A. That deals with the setting of traps.

I cannot recall section 28 (2) (c) ever being used in the ACT. The Attorney might like to correct me if he can find something. I think the New South Wales section adequately covers this matter. At any rate, there are other appropriate laws in other acts which cover similar types of situations in the territory.

The penalties for the neglect of children are also somewhat low in the ACT compared with New South Wales. They too have been increased.

The penalties for all categories of sexual assault have been increased, again to bring us into line with New South Wales, or as close as possible to that state. Again, in the area of sexual assault, there are a few extra sections and subsections dealing with this in the New South Wales Crimes Act, compared with ours. However, I have extrapolated, as closely as possible, the mean and maximum penalties where one ACT offence is similar to, say, two or three specific New South Wales offences.

In a number of areas there has been no need to increase the maximum penalty, as those in both New South Wales and the ACT were the same. Indeed, in some new additions to

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