Coddington Deborah: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Coddington Deborah: Parole (Extended Supervision) and Sentencing Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14175] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 I want to look at several issues in Part 2. Stephen Franks raised the issue of reparation and pointed out that the Government is saying we must not be too hard when reparation is being ordered; that if the offenders cannot pay it all at once in one lump sum because they do not have it or do not look like they might have it we must be kind to them and let them pay it in instalments. Can members imagine saying to someone who holds them up and demands $10000: “I don’t have it all right now.” and that person saying: “OK I’ll take it in instalments.”? That is what this measure does to offenders. 
For 30 years this country has said that if we are nice to criminals they will be nice back. It just does not work like that. We should not even have parole. Parole does not work. It is a joke. It is a lie to the community. Tony Ryall talked about people saying that the girl who had been sentenced to 7 years would serve only 2. A lot of people still do not realise that. A lot of people still think when they see a sentence of 7 years that that is good then are shocked when they read 2 years later that that person has been released. It is an anomaly that parole is given. We should not have parole at all. 
By having parole we create all these other huge problems. In fact I wonder why we even bother with a justice system when members of the Parole Board are appointed by the Minister of Justice and can be fired by the Minister yet when they consider a person’s parole they do not have to take into account why the judge set the sentence in an open court in an open justice system—except when the judge set a non-parole period which cannot be more than two-thirds of the sentence. If that is not Kafkaesque what is? Why do judges go through the process of sentencing someone to jail for a heinous crime—of stating in an open court that it was a terrible crime that the victims have been harmed immeasurably that the crime has offended the community that there needs to be a deterrent for this sort of thing and that there needs to be reparation—lulling the victims and the community into a false sense of safety and security when that person can go before the Parole Board and none of that has to be taken into account? In essence that offender goes before another secret court a secret set of judges who are appointed by the Minister and do not have to take into account any of those issues. 
The other anomaly in this legislation is the issue of cumulative and concurrent sentencing. I do not agree with concurrent sentencing at all. It is a sort of bargain bin—a two-for-one system. 
Ron Mark 
: Buy one get one free. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: Yes; an offender who murders one person might as well murder three because he or she will get the other two free. The bill contains a ridiculous clause clause 18—which I still do not really understand even though Stephen Franks explained it to me—which provides that a court cannot “impose a sentence of imprisonment cumulatively on another sentence of imprisonment if at the time of sentencing the offender is subject to a sentence of imprisonment but having commenced serving the sentence is no longer detained under it.” Well why is the offender no longer detained? If the crime was so bad that there was a sentence of the kind that imposing another sentence would be cumulative why is the offender no longer detained? Why did we get into this situation in the first place? If that person was on parole he or she should have been recalled immediately. That is the issue with our having this nonsense of parole. 
The issue of preventive detention which the Minister of Justice has boasted about constantly in this House—about how people will be imprisoned for much longer periods—is also misleading if members look at the conditions this legislation places on the release of offenders. Not a week goes by when I do not get letters from families who know about convicted offenders—