SENTENCING ADVISORY COUNCIL

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide) (15:12): My question is to the Attorney-General. Can the Attorney-General inform the house about the first issues on the agenda of the newly formed Sentencing Advisory Council?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (15:12): Yes, and I thank the honourable member for the question. I would like to advise the house that the Sentencing Advisory Council had its first meeting on Friday 30 March. The council is designed to bridge the gap between the courts and the community. It will inform the public and provide the justice system with community views and ideas for reform. The council, chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Kevin Duggan—

The Hon. M.J. Atkinson: Top bloke.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: —a very good man and excellent counsel altogether, I should add—has a mix of members, justice system experts and people from the wider community. I have asked the council as its first task to examine a particular area of the law, namely, the law relating to people who claim to be mentally unfit to plead or mentally incompetent to have committed an offence. This is a notoriously difficult area of the law. However, the consequences are that a person found unfit to plead or mentally incompetent cannot be sentenced to imprisonment. This defence has at times caused concern in the community, and it has also caused concern to the Parole Board from time to time.

The council will bring members' broad perspectives to the question of how and whether the threshold for this defence is too low. The council will provide a report to me about the relevant section of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act. I have also foreshadowed with the council that, at some point after this, it should consider looking at whether reform is needed in relation to sentencing guidelines. These are guidance provided in legislation setting out the range of penalties for particular offences and the factors judges can take into account.

The council's value is that it will bring to this and other questions a broad range of perspectives, including those of legal professionals, community members and victims advocates. I look forward to receiving the first report.