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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-02-06 Daily Xml
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Liquor Thefts

The Hon. H.M. GIROLAMO (Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:38): Supplementary: is the government considering any changes to the current legislation, such as the introduction of mandatory minimum sentences for repeat liquor theft offences?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (14:38): I thank the honourable member for her question. I have outlined some of the legislative changes we have made and we will be making in relation to protecting retail workers. In relation to minimum mandatory sentences, we do not have any intention to introduce minimum mandatory sentences. In South Australia the only mandatory sentence we have is for murder, and that is a mandatory life sentence.

Governments, of all persuasions—Labor and Liberal—over a long period of time in South Australia have not introduced mandatory sentencing and have left the discretion to the court, and I think for very good reason. As soon as one introduces as a parliament minimum mandatory sentencing for a particular offence like a theft offence, then once there is much more serious offending that occurs against people in a completely different area it would not be unreasonable for victims of those offences to request minimum mandatory sentencing.

I think one of the reasons over decades we have seen governments, of all persuasions, avoid mandatory sentencing and leaving it to the courts is that that slope, once you go down it for one particular offence it is very difficult then not to go for other offences which have an even greater impact on individuals, and we get to a situation where for many, many categories of offending you end up with minimum mandatory sentencing which can result in pretty perverse outcomes in some circumstances.

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