Labor’s ice laws will make little difference

Before the last election, Daniel Andrews told Victorians he had come up with tough new ice laws that he would legislate for immediately he was elected.

One year later, he has finally brought these new laws to Parliament. However, most of the new offences these new laws create are already crimes under existing laws, and the limited increases in penalties above existing penalties are unlikely to deter many offenders.

Unfortunately, this is yet another instance where Mr Andrews and Labor give the illusion they have solutions to a problem, but in fact have nothing that actually makes a difference.

Here’s some of what I said to Parliament yesterday –

We should all want tougher and more effective action against ice… The previous government took a wide range of measures during its term in office. We announced further reforms that were to have been introduced had we been re-elected.

We legislated for those convicted of large-scale commercial drug trafficking to automatically forfeit almost everything they own upon conviction. We introduced Victoria’s first unexplained wealth laws and laws providing for the seizure of unlawfully acquired assets; we legislated to allow criminal bikie and similar gangs to be outlawed and fortifications on their premises to be demolished. We introduced a baseline sentence of 14 years imprisonment for large-scale trafficking and manufacturing…

The Labor Party when in opposition said a lot about the ice epidemic, the then Leader of the Opposition in particular, but unfortunately the Labor Party has let the community down badly since coming to office…

Back then our now Premier was promising urgent action, but it is remarkable how the urgency disappeared once he came to office. Back then, when he was interviewed on the Neil Mitchell program on 27 August as opposition leader he was asked by Neil Mitchell:

“So you believe it is one of the … biggest drug issues we’ve faced?”

referring to ice. Our now Premier answered:

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. And what we need to do is take action …”

Later on, Neil Mitchell asked him:

“And the new offences you’d introduce immediately?”

to which the response was:

“That’s exactly right. Exactly right.”

…Delay is one obvious aspect of the failure of the Andrews government’s record when it comes to ice, but unfortunately it gets worse. The fundamental problem with this legislation is that even once the new offences are on the statute book, they are going to make very little difference. Almost everything to which one of these new offences applies is already a criminal offence, and the additional penalties provided by the bill are going to have minimal effect in deterring offenders who are already committing offences carrying long maximum penalties. If a 15-year maximum penalty on the statute book already is not going to deter an offender, will having a 20-year maximum penalty make much difference?

…if you want to make a real difference to drug offending or any other offending through tougher sentences, what is crucial is that you do not just put longer maximum sentences on the statute book. You have to make sure longer sentences are actually handed down by the courts.

That is what the previous government did with its baseline sentencing reforms. We said it was not good enough for the average sentence for sexual abuse of a child under 12 to be just 31⁄2 years, it should be 10 years. We said it was not good enough for the average sentence for a large-scale drug trafficker to be to 7 years, it should be 14 years. We legislated to require courts to shift the sentencing scale for a number of serious offences; keeping discretion for individual cases but increasing the average to the levels set by Parliament…

Regrettably the signs to date are that the government does not have its heart in defending stronger sentences and does not have its heart in legislating to make clear to reluctant judges what it is that the Parliament expects and requires…

The coalition parties do not oppose this bill because it may make some marginal improvement. Nonetheless, the government has badly let down Victorians, for whom it promised it would do something meaningful about tackling the scourge of ice in our community but for whom it has failed to do so.

(For the full Hansard draft of what I said ,see http://bit.ly/1OjcOMf. For The Age’s report on the debate about this legislation, see http://bit.ly/21iHVNm.)