Page 5192 - Week 12 - Thursday, 27 October 2011
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It is a great shame that he could not have taken a better approach than the one that he did today. He had an opportunity to pass the Canberra Liberals’ bills on two successive sitting weeks and he chose not to do so. He could have introduced amendments had he wished to do so. It could have been a collaborative approach but it has not been, and it is a great shame. Unfortunately, the Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this bill today. It is a shame that we cannot get this done today because the Canberra Liberals believe that it is time that we made substantial changes to the penalties in these provisions.
I noted comments from Mr Rattenbury this morning about deterrence and things like that. There are issues of deterrence, but deterrence is not the only aspect of why we construct penalties in this way. It was interesting that he talked at length about experiences in Victoria and how they had cut culpable driving in Victoria. At the same time Mr Rattenbury was talking about the experiences of education—and there is a lot to be said in favour of education—but, in fact, the penalties for culpable driving in Victoria are much higher than even those proposed by the attorney or me. There is more to this than a simple one-liner saying that education is better than increasing the penalties. If you look at the achievements in Victoria, you will find that these have occurred on the back of both education and tougher penalties.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.01): The Greens will not be supporting this bill today. Sentencing is a complex issue. I think that Mrs Dunne touched on that in her last remarks. It involves questions of community expectations about punishment, how best to deter a similar crime from occurring in the future and the question of rehabilitation of offenders, amongst other issues. They are the primary ones.
We ask that our judges up weigh these competing factors and impose a sentence that is proportionate to the seriousness of the crime. Because of this complexity, any reforms to sentencing demand a very careful approach which is guided by evidence. Before any parliament approves changes to sentencing laws, it should be provided with evidence of how the change will better meet one or more of these seven purposes of sentencing. Parliaments need to be shown how it will achieve stronger deterrence of crime, more effective rehabilitation or a more accurate reflection of informed community standards.
Unfortunately, this bill is accompanied by no such evidence. The Greens do not believe that the required level of work has been done to justify the changes proposed in the bill today. The Greens are not alone in holding the view that any changes to sentencing should be supported with evidence. Certainly, there are a number of community organisations that have made remarks on this and I would like to touch on a few of them.
Civil Liberties Australia have written to the Attorney-General, Mrs Dunne and me setting out their belief that the proposal is an incident-based approach, not an evidence-based approach. The President of the ACT Law Society last week stated, “We shouldn’t change sentencing laws just to bring them into line with other jurisdictions unless there’s a very good reason to do so,” before going on to say that evidence needs to be gathered on what impact revised sentences will have.
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