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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-07-14 Daily Xml
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Question Time

ROBINSON, MR S.A.

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:08): My question is for the Attorney-General. Was he wrong when he claimed yesterday, on radio, that the District Court applied a discretion in the Shane Andrew Robinson case, when a statement today by the Acting Chief Judge of that court clearly states that no such discretion applied? Yesterday the Attorney-General stated on Radio FIVEaa:

Well, clearly, it's a bad day, as you say, for the justice system. Shane Andrew Robinson was on parole. The Rann government had passed serious repeat offender legislation to apply to people like him. It wasn't applied in his case.

When asked by the presenter why it had not been applied, the Attorney-General replied, 'That's a discretion for the court.' Today, Acting Chief Judge Malcolm Robertson issued a statement in which he states:

Amendments permitting a judge to declare a person to be a serious repeat offender did not apply to offences committed before the date the amendments came into force, which was July 27, 2003.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON (Croydon—Attorney-General, Minister for Justice, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) (14:09): One of the first bills on which I deliberated, on becoming Attorney-General, was the serious repeat offender legislation. What happened is that for generations our state had habitual criminals legislation, and it was no longer being applied—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: You haven't reformed, have you? It was no longer being applied by the courts. Indeed, it was no longer even being applied for by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. My advice was that we needed to modernise habitual offender legislation, so we introduced—and, indeed, this parliament passed—the serious repeat offender legislation.

What that meant was that, if an offender committed three serious crimes in three separate courses of conduct, then the court was invited by the parliament to throw the book at that offender—what the public would expect actually. Therefore, the judge was guided by the legislation not to apply the proportionality principle but, rather, to put that out the window and to bring in a heavy sentence and a nonparole period which was three-quarters of the head sentence as a minimum. That is what the public would expect.

We had a seamless application for generations. For generations we had habitual criminal legislation. From early in the Rann government we had serious repeat offender legislation. I would think that somewhere between those two acts of parliament we would have found one that could have been applied to Shane Andrew Robinson because, if such legislation had been applied to him, he would still have been in gaol; he would not have been in a position to do what he did around Yunta last week. That is the point that the Rann government takes—and that is the point on which the opposition criticises us.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: The opposition leader has rallied, as she always did in the past, to Frances Nelson and the Parole Board, defending every decision they take. Shane Andrew Robinson, I am advised, had 80 offences—offences such as sieges, extreme violence, sexual offending against teenagers and dishonesty.

That is not the end of it. Here is a fact: the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions went to court in the case of Robinson, I am advised, and made a submission that the serious repeat offender legislation applied. That submission was not successful.

Ms Chapman: It failed miserably.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: The Office of the DPP failed miserably, according to the member for Bragg. Let me come back to that interjection; I will come back to that. The Office of the DPP applied to have the serious repeat offender legislation applied, or at least something that would lead to a longer than normal sentence. The Leader of the Opposition is right, and Acting Chief Judge Robertson is right. The submission was not successful; that is correct. It was not successful. I wish it had been successful because, if it had been successful, Shane Andrew Robinson would not have been in a position to do what he did.

I do not quibble with the right of a District Court judge to exercise his judgment in a particular way. He is independent. He made his decision—we accept that. By the way, returning to the member for Bragg's interjection that the Office of the DPP failed hopelessly—

Ms Chapman: You knew that; you said that on radio.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: The Office of the DPP appealed against the sentence imposed on Shane Andrew Robinson on the grounds that it was manifestly inadequate. Remember this: the Leader of the Opposition—the new Liberal leader—is against the government ever giving a direction to the Office of the DPP to appeal against manifestly inadequate sentences. Indeed, the new Leader of the Opposition believes that Paul Habib Nemer should not have spent one day in gaol—not one day in gaol.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: Mr Speaker—

Mr Goldsworthy interjecting:

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: The member for Kavel says, 'Everyone has turned off the Nemer case; they're no longer interested in it.' We'll see! The Office of the DPP, which the member for Bragg says 'failed hopelessly', appealed against this sentence on the grounds that it was manifestly inadequate and its sentence was upheld—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: The appeal was upheld, the sentence was set aside and a new—

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Bragg will come to order!

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: I thought that the member for Heysen was the leader. The appeal by the DPP was upheld and a longer sentence was imposed on Shane Andrew Robinson. I do not think that is abject failure: I think that is success by the Office of the DPP. It is true that, in this case, Judge Kitchen decided that the transition between the habitual criminals legislation and the serious repeat offender legislation meant that he could not apply the serious repeat offender legislation.

He made that decision, and no doubt the copper who got stabbed in the back, the woman who was sexually assaulted at the station and the stockman or farmer who was almost run down wish he had made a different decision.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

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