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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-03-19 Daily Xml
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Sentencing

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (15:11): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Attorney-General questions regarding licensing laws and sentencing in South Australia.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: Christopher Bennett was charged with aggravated driving without due care and driving disqualified due to an accident that killed Mr Brad Thompson, a husband and father of two, who passed away in front of family members at the scene of the crash last November. Bennett was jailed for just three months for killing Brad Thompson, as he was given six months, due to his early guilty plea, with the remainder suspended on a two-year, $100,000 good behaviour bond. The maximum penalty for the offence and being found guilty was 12 months at the time of his offending, but since that time this parliament has increased that maximum penalty to seven years.

Bennett had previously had his licence disqualified at least 11 times prior to the fatal accident he caused, despite being only 29 years of age. It is understood that Bennett had been disqualified from driving just eight days before this fatal accident occurred. My questions to the Attorney-General are:

1. If the circumstances in this case do not justify the maximum penalty, what on earth does?

2. Is this justice for the absolutely devastated Thompson family?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:13): I thank the honourable member for his question, it is a very good question, and certainly all of our condolences go out to the family of Brad Thompson, a loving husband and father of five, for this tragic incident that should never have happened.

As the honourable member pointed out, at the time this offence occurred in November last year, the maximum penalty we, as a parliament, had set down for the court to impose was 12 months. With the availability of entering an early guilty plea—which is there for very good reasons, to encourage people to enter guilty pleas and not put victims through the trauma of a trial on many occasions—I understand the sentence was down from six months to three months. He was ordered to serve three months' imprisonment, with the remainder suspended on a two-year good behaviour bond.

I don't have all the details of all the circumstances that would have been presented to the magistrate by both sides in the prosecution and defence of this case, but one can easily understand why many people in the community think that the outcomes we see in these sorts of situations ought to carry the possibility of not just more than 12 months but more than what was received.

What was received was because of the maximum of 12 months. That is why, as the honourable member has indicated, if that offence had occurred from, I think, 1 January this year, when new laws came into effect that this parliament had passed particularly in response to the tragic death of Sophia Naismith, the maximum penalty for an aggravated offence, which I am pretty sure would have been the case, given what we know about the facts—although we don't know all the facts in this case—would have been seven years.

Given that the maximum range has gone from just 12 months to seven years, there is no doubt this would have attracted a more severe penalty had it been prosecuted under laws which have been passed now. That is exactly why we brought these in, because there was that missing mid-level offence that was not on our statutes before that now is.

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