26 I accept this opinion with the obvious qualification that the statement that you appear to have managed your life within the limitations of your personality to an admirable degree must be understood to exclude the offence, which brings you before this Court.
27 Putting the above matters together, I am satisfied of the following, noting that I must be satisfied of matters adverse to you beyond reasonable doubt, but may have regard to matters in your favour, established on the balance of probabilities.
28 At the time of your offence, you were an isolated man, who had little extended social relationship with others.
29 I cannot be satisfied in any detailed way of the structure or nature of the relationship between you and your father, save to observe that you were clearly living together over many years in circumstances where each of you must necessarily have spent extended periods of time with each other.
30 I also accept that it is likely the relationship between you and your father became more difficult after the death of your mother in 1994.
31 I am satisfied that you do not deal with your feelings and emotions in a normal manner, but rather tend to focus upon matters of practical and incidental detail.
32 I am satisfied that at the time of the killing you were subject to personal stress, due to the destabilisation of your relationship with your father, following confrontations involving your brother and as I have said, as a result of the ongoing dispute with the Commonwealth Government concerning compensation for the injury to your ear and consequent depression, which was not resolved until later in 2000.
33 I am satisfied as Dr Vine says, you were also suffering from chronic moderate depression. I am also satisfied that you were fascinated with machinery, in particular weaponry and it seems to me you have always sought answers in the detail of life, rather than in a bigger picture.
34 I am satisfied that the probability is that your crime was somehow generated by the relationship with your father and that this occurred in the context I have described of joblessness, distress from tinnitus, depression and ongoing conflict between your father and his sons.
35 I accept that this lessens the significance of specific deterrence in your case, although the identification by Dr Vine of schizoid, paranoid and obsessional traits in your personality, is not reassuring. I am also satisfied that the chronic moderate depression and personality characteristics described by Dr Vine are such as to have potentially inhibited to some degree a realisation of the true consequences of your crime and the scale of its iniquity.
36 I am not satisfied that the characteristics described by Dr Vine are such as to render your case one which is other than an appropriate vehicle for general deterrence. It seems to me that considerations of general deterrence arise in your case, not only with respect to the crime of murder itself, but also with respect to the use of an unregistered modified firearm for criminal purposes.
37 I am however satisfied, that both because of your tinnitus and your obsession with it and your associated depression, it is likely you will suffer more stress in a prison environment than the ordinary person and you have also been subjected as a preliminary to an extended trial process with associated stress.
38 Mr Jensen, it is incumbent upon me to affirm the sanctity of human life and the fundamental value which the law of this community ascribes to it. The Court must denounce the brutal and deliberate killing of your father. I must also seek to impose a sentence which is just in all the circumstances of the case, and which reinforces in the public mind the seriousness with which the law seeks to deter deliberate killings.
39 I am prepared to moderate somewhat the penalty I would otherwise impose, firstly to reflect the depressive condition and personality characteristics which Dr Vine has diagnosed, which in my view do bear to some extent upon your moral culpability[1]; and secondly, to acknowledge the probability that the combination of tinnitus, chronic moderate depression and your personality characteristics will render long-term imprisonment somewhat more stressful for you than for the ordinary person, particularly having regard to the extended trial process you have undergone.
40 Mr Jensen, having regard to the above matters and to the purposes set out in s. 5 of the Sentencing Act 1999, I sentence you to a term of 20 years imprisonment for the murder of your father, and I fix a non-parole period of 16 years. I declare pursuant to s.18(4) of the Sentencing Act 1991 that you have already served a period of 1,132 days in custody. Would you remove the prisoner please.