Nguyen v Commissioner of Police, New South Wales Police Force

The 2017 offence

The elements of an offence under s 572C are set out in that section which provides: 527C Persons unlawfully in possession of property (1) Any person who: (a) has any thing in his or her custody, (b) has any thing in the custody of another person, (c) has any thing in or on premises, whether belonging to or occupied by himself or herself or not, or whether that thing is there for his or her own use or the use of another, or (d) gives custody of any thing to a person who is not lawfully entitled to possession of the thing, which thing may be reasonably suspected of being stolen or otherwise unlawfully obtained, is liable on conviction before the Local Court: (a) if the thing is a motor vehicle or a motor vehicle part, or a vessel or a vessel part, to imprisonment for 1 year, or to a fine of 10 penalty units, or both, or (b) in the case of any other thing, to imprisonment for 6 months, or to a fine of 5 penalty units, or both. (1A) A prosecution for an offence under subsection (1) involving the giving of custody of a motor vehicle to a person who is not lawfully entitled to possession of the motor vehicle may be commenced at any time within 2 years after the date of commission of the offence. (2) It is a sufficient defence to a prosecution for an offence under subsection (1) if the defendant satisfies the court that he or she had no reasonable grounds for suspecting that the thing referred to in the charge was stolen or otherwise unlawfully obtained.
Mr El Hage for the Commissioner referred me to the decision of Deputy President Hennessy in Joyce v Commissioner of Police, New South Wales Police Service [2000] NSWADT 17, where the Deputy President determined that an offence under section 527C of the Crimes Act was an offence involving dishonesty for the purposes of the Security Industry Regulation 1998 (NSW). Clause 11(d) of that regulation was in similar terms to regulation 5(1)(f) of the Firearms Regulation.
That decision was upheld on appeal (Joyce v Commissioner of Police, New South Wales Police Service [2000] NSWADTAP 17). At [24] the Appeal Panel stated: "the focus of the offence is on the candour, honesty and plausibility of the defendant's explanation" (that is for having the relevant possession of the relevant goods).
As Mr El Hage pointed out, the decision in Joyce has been followed in Song v Commissioner for Fair Trading, NSW Office of Fair Trading [2006] NSWADT 218 in relation to section 16 of the Property Stock and Business Agents Act and in Tafengatoto v Commissioner of Police, New South Wales Police Service [2001] NSWADT 40 in relation to clause 11(d) of the Security Industry Regulation 1998.
Deputy President Hennessy stated in Joyce: 14 Are fraud, dishonesty or stealing "involved" in s 527C? In R v Alexander William Madden No 60547 of 1994 [4] and [5] the Supreme Court stated that: The issue which the prosecution must establish under s 527C is not whether the arresting police officer or the court reasonably suspects that the thing was unlawfully obtained; rather, it is whether such a description may objectively relate to the thing itself - that it is something which might reasonably be suspected of having been unlawfully obtained. . . . It is unnecessary to prove that the person charged entertained, or may have entertained, such a suspicion. This is an issue which may be raised in relation to the defence afforded by s 527C(2). . . The effect of this statutory framework is thus that the state of knowledge of the person charged as to the provenance of the particular things found in his custody is irrelevant to the prosecution case; but, if the court is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt upon the state of the evidence before it that those things may be reasonably suspected of being stolen or otherwise unlawfully obtained, the person charged must, in order to escape conviction, discharge the lesser civil onus upon him of satisfying the court that he had no reasonable grounds for suspecting that they were stolen or unlawfully obtained. 15 The Crown does not need to prove that the person charged stole or otherwise unlawfully obtained the "thing" - generally goods. All that is required is that the person has the goods in his or her custody and that the goods themselves, from an objective point of view, may be reasonably suspected of being stolen or otherwise unlawfully obtained. 16 A person charged under 527C can rely on the defence that he or she had no reasonable grounds for suspecting that the goods were stolen or otherwise unlawfully obtained. That suspicion must relate to the goods themselves. 17 This analysis makes it clear that fraud, dishonesty or stealing are not legal requirements or elements of an offence under s 527C. Are they nevertheless "involved" in the offence? In my view stealing is not "involved" in s 527C because the stealing does not relate to the person charged. Even if a person does have reasonable grounds for suspecting that goods in his or her custody were stolen, that person is not necessarily implicated in the stealing of them. Just because an offence contains the word "stealing" does not necessarily mean that it is an offence involving stealing. It cannot have been parliament's intention to deny a security licence to a person convicted of an offence "involving stealing" unless the stealing relates to that person. 18 My conclusions are different in relation to whether the offence involves "dishonesty." "Dishonesty" is defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (7th edition, Oxford at the Clarendon Press 1982) as "lack of honesty; deceitfulness, fraud." A person would be acting dishonestly or deceitfully where that person fails to disclose to police that goods have come into his or her custody in circumstances where that person has reasonable grounds for suspecting that the goods have been stolen or otherwise unlawfully obtained. The ordinary meaning of dishonesty does not require that the person engage in some positive act. It can include a situation where a person fails to act. 19 It does not make any difference to this conclusion whether the goods in the person's custody have been stolen or obtained by some other unlawful means. The person has still acted dishonestly or deceitfully by failing to take any action which would bring the situation to the attention of police. …
The decisions in Joyce, both at first instance and of the Appeal Panel, are explicit authority that an offence under section 527C of the Crimes Act is an offence involving dishonesty.
Mr Kondich, who appeared for Mr Nguyen, submitted that I should look to the circumstances behind the relevant offence. As stated in the COPS Event Report relating to the 2017 offence, which was included in the bundle of documents tendered by the respondent, Mr Nguyen was convicted in respect of the possession of an amount of $4,840.00 in cash located within a hole in the wall in Mr Nguyen's bedroom.
It was not clear to me from Mr Kondich's submissions how it could be said that the concealment of moneys (which Mr Nguyen could not establish that he had no reasonable grounds for suspecting were stolen or otherwise unlawfully obtained) in a wall cavity did not involve dishonesty. Nevertheless, I do not consider it necessary to consider this issue further. I must determine the question whether an offence "involves dishonesty" by reference to the elements of the offence without further enquiry. In that respect I am bound to follow the Appeal Panel's decision in Farah which, although it relates to a different statutory provision, is, in my view, not distinguishable. In my view the decision in Farah is correct and consistent with other authority binding upon the Tribunal.
Although the decisions in Joyce pre-dated the decision in Farah, as Mr El Hage submitted the decision in Joyce was reached upon the same basis as the decision in Farah. In paragraph [22] of the decision at first instance in Joyce, the Deputy President held: 22 … the Tribunal cannot go behind the offence. In particular, the Tribunal cannot make a determination about whether the applicant was in fact guilty of the offence or whether the facts of the particular case involved fraud, dishonesty or stealing. As long as the applicant has been convicted of the offence and that offence fits within the description of a prescribed offence under the Regulation, the administrator must refuse to grant a security licence to that person. For this reason I have not referred to the evidence given by Mr Joyce about the particular circumstances of the offence.
I consider that the decisions in Joyce are correct and should be followed. Accordingly, I find that by reason of Mr Nguyen's conviction of an offence pursuant to section 527C of the Crimes Act, he is a disqualified person for the purposes of section 75(1A) of the Firearms Act and the Tribunal has no jurisdiction to review the Commissioner's decision to issue a firearms prohibition order to Mr Nguyen.
Having determined that Mr Nguyen's offence under section 572C was an offence involving dishonesty, it is not necessary that I consider whether the offence under section 316 of the Crimes Act was also an offence involving dishonesty and I refrain from doing so.
My orders will be: 1. The application is dismissed as the Tribunal has no jurisdiction to determine the matter.

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