Page 4163 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 November 2005
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take into account and may have regard to any other matter. Something like this cannot be completely exhaustive; there are a lot of things a court needs to take into account.
There are circumstances, obviously, when the family circumstances, just like you say, Chief Minister, are probably so extreme and perhaps the offence is not so heinous that that would mean a person should receive leniency. Indeed, the same applies to the persons themselves. In amendment 11, the court may have regard to any other matter it considers appropriate. The court has ample and full discretion, and there are ample cases, interstate funnily enough and here in the territory, to indicate that courts quite appropriately take into consideration matters of personal hardship. Read the thing properly.
I have spoken in the past in terms of—and I am happy to use this as an example again—the worst offence of all, murder. I would have every sympathy with the court not even imposing a custodial sentence on a battered wife of 20 years who, after 20 years of absolute misery to herself and her children, finally snapped and killed the offender. Those things have occurred in the past in Australia, and no doubt will continue to. It is very important for members not to get carried away with their own rhetoric and to read the amendments.
That having been said, I can see these amendments will be going down. As a result, we can also speed up a couple of things later in terms of other amendments which are consequential and which I will not be moving.
Amendments negatived.
Clause 33, as amended, agreed to.
Proposed new clause 33A.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra) (5.33): I move amendment No 12 circulated in my name, which inserts a new clause 33A [see schedule 1 at page 4176]. This would introduce sentencing guidelines. It states:
(1) In deciding the sentence to be imposed on an offender for an offence, a court must have regard to any relevant guideline judgment.
(2) If a court imposes on the offender a sentence that is inconsistent with the relevant guideline judgment, the court must give written reasons for the inconsistency.
(3) This section is in addition to, but does not limit, section 33.
(4) In this section:
guideline judgment, for an offence, means a judgment of the Court of Appeal—
which we now have—
that is expressed to contain guidelines to be taken into account by courts sentencing offenders.
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