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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 4753 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

do is have consistency between our two jurisdictions, given that the ACT is an island within the state of New South Wales.

One of the mantras of people who opposed proper sentencing-I am not going to call it tougher; it's just sensible, proper sentencing-is that deterrence is nothing. You are never going to stop crime; people are going to commit it. Yes, people will always commit crime. Even if you have the death penalty people are still going to commit crime. It certainly stops them dead in their tracks I suppose if they are caught, but you are never ever going to completely stop it. But deterrence does work.

I will give two simple examples. Talking about violence against women and violence against children, I am appalled to hear the Chief Minister say that we have 20 years maximum for rape. In New South Wales Bob Carr has imposed life sentencing for the type of rape-pack rape-I have put in my legislation. That enabled Justice Finnane to bring down his landmark decisions, which I think were so appreciated by the general law-abiding public, in relation to those horrendous crimes against those innocent young women by that organised gang of absolute monsters. They committed those horrible offences against defenceless women. Police from New South Wales have told me that in the 12 months after Finnane's very good judgment, rapes in Sydney dropped by 75 per cent.

I am reminded of another case which had a happy ending. It relates to a young bloke who was before the ACT courts when I was first prosecuting. He later moved to New South Wales. He was a compulsive car thief. He was about 18 or 19. He had committed two or three lots of offences in the ACT. I am not too sure how many cars were involved. It was probably 10 to 15 each time. He got bond after bond.

He went to Gosford, he picked up a few cars and he was given a 12-month jail sentence, to serve six. He fainted. This young bloke did not believe that he would ever be jailed because he had gone through our system. He did his time in New South Wales. One of the police involved actually had a bit of a soft spot for him. He checked up on him to see how he was going. He got out; he got a job. Jail had a very salutary effect on him. He did not want to go back.

I have known quite a few criminals who have gone to jail and who certainly do not want to go back. What happens in jail is a process of rehabilitation. Do not confuse the two. That is why we need our own prison.

Mr Hargreaves: Sixty per cent have been there before.

MR STEFANIAK: Basically, you lot are almost saying, "Well, you really shouldn't jail anyone because you're either going to just encourage people if it's a serious crime, like Mr Stanhope says, to commit even worse crimes, or we should be looking rehabilitating, look at the root causes". This is again a cop-out I think. You lot are not very good at root causes anyway, as Mr Smyth pointed out. This is what Ms Tucker is saying-look at the root causes.

I am sorry, there is a time and a need for proper sentencing for people who commit serious crimes. The ACT community expects it. A large number of people in the legal profession also would like to see it, contrary to what some people would put about. It is

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