Page 559 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 10 February 2009
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that many injuries which once would inevitably have been significant or longstanding, or perhaps even fatal, are now able to be treated in their entirety with complete recovery perhaps possible. I suspect that there would be instances where the Crown’s case would fall over because it could not establish beyond reasonable doubt what the exact hypothetical longstanding prognosis would have been for a form of injury that in other circumstances could possibly have been longstanding or significant, bearing in mind that the charge is one of murder, so the harm that was actually caused was death.
I do not want to appear glib, but it strikes me as strange that a person could be charged with murder when they are proved to have intended to cause harm of a longstanding nature. Does that not imply then that they really did not want their victim to die, as that would thwart their intention of inflicting longstanding harm?
Having said all that, I want to put on the record that I have some considerable sympathy for the Attorney-General’s plight, and I recognise that there may well be merit in some of the provisions of this bill. That is why the Greens will be voting to refer these amendments to the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety, as already referred to by Mrs Dunne. I think that more detailed consideration is well warranted in the circumstances.
It may well be that the reporting of a number of manslaughter convictions in the ACT would convince the general community that they belong more appropriately in the category of murder. I note that the Attorney-General has denied that these amendments arise as a result of any particular case, and this is as it should be. It would be a deplorable situation if the definitions of serious offences were altered as knee-jerk responses to individual, high profile and politically embarrassing criminal cases. It would also be deplorable if the definitions and penalty provisions of serious offences were to be subject to some kind of pre-election bidding war where parties were doing their best to be seen to be the toughest on crime. Such populism actually damages the rule of law and weakens the principle that the punishment should fit the crime.
Of course, I recognise that the beat of the law and order drum in an election year is difficult for the established parties to ignore. But anyone with more than a modicum of experience in legal matters knows that it is generally dangerous and ignorant in the extreme to reach conclusions about the correctness of particular judicial decisions without having either sat through all of the evidence or, alternatively, to have read the entire judgement. Merely reading the opinion of a journalist or a contributor to letters to the editor of the Canberra Times or listening to what some radio commentator has to say about a judicial decision is more likely to obscure than clarify the essential truth or justice of a matter.
I do not want to speculate too widely, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the government foresees that there is a problem with the conviction rate for murder and the sentencing regime for manslaughter in the ACT. Rather than examining or addressing the root causes of the problems, it has taken the path of attempting to widen the net so as to make it easier for the police and the DPP to obtain a conviction for murder rather than manslaughter.
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