Sentence: Total effective sentence 18 month Community Correction Order; s 6AAA: 8 months' imprisonment combined with a Community Correction Order
[2]
Robert Shanmuganathan, you have pleaded guilty to negligently causing serious injury arising from a motor vehicle collision that occurred on 20 January 2025.
[3]
The agreed basis for your guilty plea is set out in the amended summary of prosecution opening dated 4 March 2026 and I sentence you on the basis of your plea and the facts contained in the summary.
In short, on 20 January 2025 just after 6pm, you were driving your car on Dalmore Road, Tooradin. At the intersection with the South Gippsland Highway, you turned right towards Melbourne.
At that intersection, the Highway is divided by a wide median strip between north and southbound carriageways that is populated by bushes and trees. Each of the two carriageways consisted of two lanes divided by a broken centre line in the same manner as Dalmore Road along which you had been driving.
I accept that the Southbound carriageway may have looked like an ordinary two-lane two-way road with trees and bushes on either side.
In any case, you continued the wrong way north along the southbound lanes. I accept, however, that you genuinely believed you were proceeding in the correct lane.
You continued driving until you saw oncoming vehicles flashing their headlights and moving their vehicles to avoid you. After about 500 metres, realising your error, you slowed, and moved to the left hand emergency lane to make a U-turn.
Tragically, however, at that time, Tauren Coleiro was riding his motorcycle southwards approaching your location. He was riding behind a car in the left lane facing south. Immediately before the collision, he moved from his left into the right lane, where you were. Evidently, he did not expect a vehicle to be where you were, which stands to reason along that stretch of road.
I accept that because he was not riding in the lane you were in until he changed lanes, you did not see him approach when you started your turn until it was too late.
Following the collision, you stopped and remained at the scene. With other drivers you rendered assistance. When police arrived, you spoke to them, admitting your role in the accident.
Mr Coleiro sustained life-threatening injuries and spent about 3 months in hospital and rehabilitation.
Since, Mr Coleiro has been assessed as retaining his cognitive skills largely intact. However, his left arm is unlikely to ever return to its previous level of functioning. He has not been able to return to work and needs ongoing assistance.
While Mr Coleiro has not provided a victim impact statement, this incident has clearly made significant impact on him. To your credit, you have not shied away from the impact of this incident on Mr Coleiro.
[4]
Police interviewed you on 21 January 2025, the day after the crash. You made full admissions and, after being charged, you have remained on bail since.
You pleaded guilty at the earliest stage of the proceeding, at a committal mention.
Your plea has real utilitarian benefit, avoiding the cost and inconvenience of a trial and in not requiring Mr Coleiro to give evidence. I accept that your plea indicates your acceptance of responsibility, your willingness to facilitate the course of justice and your genuine remorse.
[5]
You were 35 at the time of the offending and you are now 36.
You were born in Mannar, Sri Lanka, as one of four siblings. Your early life was marked by significant hardship in the context of the Sri Lankan civil war, your family being displaced to India, where you were raised in a refugee camp. Your statutory declaration made on 31 May 2013 in connection with your protection visa application (Exhibit 1) details this hardship and the basis of your protection claims.
I accept that while in Sri Lanka your family was targeted by military forces and your father and mother have been detained at different times.
Despite these difficult circumstances, you nevertheless completed primary, secondary school, and further studies in engineering.
Your persecution, however, continued in India. On one occasion, you were approached by men, suspected of acting on behalf of warring parties back home, who attempted to abduct you, leaving you unconscious after knocking you off your motorbike.
In the context of such threats, your father advised you that it was no longer safe for you there. You left India in 2012 to seek asylum in Australia, arriving here in 2013. You remained in immigration detention for about 7 months before taking your place in the community where you are now a permanent resident. You have applied for, but have not yet been granted, citizenship (Exhibit 2).
You also have a strong work history since arriving in Australia, having worked primarily as a plant operator, while also providing support to other migrants.
In 2023, you were the passenger in a motor vehicle collision after which you were hospitalised for injuries to your neck, back, and jaw. The medical documents you provided (Exhibit 6) show that you were treated by specialists for your back and jaw and an audiologist found you to have permanent and severe hearing loss in both ears. The combination of these injuries left you unable to work and you currently rely on Centrelink.
In 2025, you married your wife, however, she has returned to India pending the outcome of her own application for a visa to remain here with you.
You have no criminal history.
In preparation for your hearing, neuropsychologist Dr Mathew Staios assessed you and provided a report dated 22 February 2026 (Exhibit 3).
In it, he states that you live with low and anxious mood, particularly in relation to these legal proceedings, made worse by your physical health conditions, and your separation from your wife.
He assessed you as having clinical symptoms of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress.
These symptoms are exacerbated by your difficult life experiences, including your childhood experience of war, displacement, and instability, chronic pain and unemployment following the previous motor vehicle accident, your immigration and legal uncertainty, and separation from your primary supports, chiefly your wife.
Dr Staios also stated that you exhibited a pronounced level of remorse and shame for your role in this offending, reflecting genuine distress on your behalf.
Notwithstanding his assessment of the psychological issues you face, Dr Staios assessed you as being a resilient individual with positive prospects of improving your mental health and adaptive functioning.
You have also engaged in psychological treatment with Steve Meade. In his letter dated 1 August 2025 (Exhibit 4), he sets out your persistent engagement with him in dealing with the hardship you faced after the previous motor vehicle accident that resulted in you losing your work. He also details your considerable isolation due to separation from your wife and a lack of other social supports. He observed, however, that you have adopted a proactive approach to moving forward with your life.
Taylor Alley, Mehmet Arik, Ugur Kizkapan, and Jerry Kasab provided character references (Exhibit 5). In them, they describe you as a reliable, responsible, respectful, trustworthy, and considerate friend. They describe you as a calm person who treats others decently and respectfully. I note that Ms Alley, Mr Arik, and Mr Kasab have been present in court in support of you. The insights these references provide are invaluable.
[6]
The maximum penalty for Charge 1, negligently causing serious injury, is 10 years' imprisonment.
Pursuant to sections 87P(b) and 89(2)(b) of the Sentencing Act, this offence is a serious motor vehicle offence, and the Court must cancel your licence and disqualify you from obtaining any other for at least 2 years.
The purposes of sentencing in serious driving matters are understandably directed to ensuring those who are on or near our roads remain safe. For this reason, sentences must be imposed to send a message to all drivers.
In your case, failing to make your way to the correct lanes of the highway rendered your driving unsafe to others and specifically Mr Coleiro.
I note the fair concession of the prosecutor that you genuinely believed you were driving in the correct lane when you turned onto the Highway and that as soon as it became clear to you that you were not, you sought to turn around. I find that there was no one in the lane you occupied when you started your turn, when and where the collision then occurred.
You were not speeding, using your phone, showing-off, driving erratically, sleep-deprived, or under the influence of alcohol or drugs. You were a fully licenced driver, your vehicle was registered and you have no history of bad driving.
While the objective dangerousness of driving on the wrong side of this highway was high, I find the objective gravity of your offence to be low.
I accept that deterring others from driving negligently is of central importance in sentencing for offences like this. As the research of the Sentencing Advisory Council in its report of 2011 spells out, whether harsher penalties deter crime has been considered questionable.
However, it is accepted that where an offender anticipates apprehension for an offence, deterrence has been shown to increase. Given the concession in the prosecution opening here, in circumstances where the accused had no appreciation of any wrongdoing, it is difficult to identify the message that imprisonment would send to the driving public.
I note the general findings of the SAC report that the evidence shows that imprisonment has, at best, a small but generally insignificant effect on that rate of offending. I find that any such effect in circumstances such as this case is indeed likely to be insignificant.
In as much as negligence in the criminal context needs to be denounced, this principle is also enlivened here. However, I note that in cases like this, it is not a poor or anti-social attitude, or criminal recklessness or intention that requires denunciation. In my view, the weight to be given to denunciation that is not already addressed by general deterrence is minor.
Just punishment for an offence must necessarily be ordered. That is to say, the individual must bear the cost of what they did. As cases such as Boulton make clear, punishment may be achieved by orders including but not limited to imprisonment. Even moderately serious offending may legitimately be disposed of by way of a non-custodial order.
I note in this respect that disqualification, certainly for an extended period, is punitive and forms part of the total punishment imposed by the Court (see Gurbuz v The King[2024] VSCA 189 at [32]). The minimum period of disqualification in this case is 2 years, which I find, for you, with your limited community supports and non-English speaking background will be a real difficulty.
You have no criminal history or signs of any anti-social behaviour or attitudes. You are a person of good character. In sentencing you, there is no basis for giving any weight to specific deterrence or community protection.
I regard your rehabilitation prospects to be excellent, if not already achieved. You immediately took responsibility for what happened and have continued to address the consequences since. You have good insight into what happened and your future needs. Your risk to the community, in my view, is negligible.
The prosecutor submitted that only a term of imprisonment, although a short one combined with a CCO would be appropriate in your case. Your counsel submitted that taking everything into account, a CCO alone would suffice.
The prosecutor provided the cases of Gurovski[2018] VSCA 3, Huang[2022] VCC 2226 and Haynes[2022] VCC 59 and submitted they were comparable. Gurovski was driving a heavy vehicle and failed to take a bend straying significantly into the oncoming lane. Huang drove along the wrong side of a two-lane two-way road for an extended time without driving on the left at all. Haynes drove up the wrong side of a divided freeway for 1.3 kms or more when sleep deprived with low visibility due to fog and had a history of driving offences.
Your counsel referred me to Harrison & Rigogiannisv The Queen[2015] VSCA 349, where the Court of Appeal held at [130] that some instances of negligently causing serious injury by driving in the lower category of seriousness may attract a CCO alone. He also pointed to Saurini[2022] VCC 1054 in which a driver, while somewhat blinded by police headlights, drove off hitting the police car door causing serious injury to an officer. In Gatelein[2018] VCC 1736, a CCO alone was imposed on the driver who was intoxicated and driving erratically, but who was also the sole carer or a severely disabled child, which attracted mercy.
While I am not bound to sentence you in the same way as in these cases, I have considered them as indicating something of current sentencing practices.
Given the positions of the parties, I have requested an assessment of you by Corrections. They provided a mental health screening report (Exhibit A) and a suitability report (Exhibit B). The assessments were conducted with the assistance of the necessary interpreter.
The Senior Mental Health Clinician, described you as having mild ongoing mental health problems due to cumulative trauma and stress about this case, for which you should continue your ongoing treatment with Mr Meade.
You were assessed as being a low risk of further offending and not in need of anything other than ongoing treatment for your own mental health. The assessor's observations of your honesty, remorse and distress over what happened coincides with the other material I have described.
As highlighted by the assessors, including a senior mental health clinician, I am mindful of the ongoing distress you have displayed to numerous observers over the past 14 months. I accept that you have suffered throughout that time for what you did. This is significant and in my view attracts some weight favouring leniency in sentencing.
In all of the circumstances, objective and personal, I have come to the conclusion that yours is an unusual case that calls for leniency. Being bound to apply the principle of parsimony, I am unable to find that a term of imprisonment is the only way to meet all of the sentencing criteria.
Accordingly, on the charge of negligently causing serious injury, I sentence you with conviction to a community correction order alone for a period of 18 months. Beyond the core conditions of the order, you must complete 100 hours of community service and engage in treatment and rehabilitation for your mental health.
I make this order expecting that every occasion during the order when you attend the office of corrections you will be reminded of why you are there. I am satisfied that this will be a matter of ongoing distress to you and adds to the order's punitive effect.
In accordance with section 6AAA of the Sentencing Act 1991, but for your plea of guilty I would have imposed 8 months combined with a CCO.
In accordance with section 89 of the Sentencing Act, your driver licence is cancelled, and you are disqualified from obtaining another for 2 years.