(2) A person is not guilty of an offence under this section if the person satisfies the court that the money or other material benefit concerned:
(a) was received by the person for the lawful provision of goods or services, or
(b) was paid or provided in accordance with a judgment or an order of a court or a legislative requirement, whether or not under New South Wales law.
8 Payment of rent by, for example, a brothel owner in circumstances where the landlord is aware that the rent is derived wholly or in part from acts of child prostitution would, to my mind, constitute an offence under 91E. The exclusion provided by 91E(2)(a) does not cover permission (in whatever form) to use or occupy premises. Even if it did, s 91F would make the provision of such premises unlawful. It follows that there was no need, as the Crown particularised its case, to charge the applicant with offences under 91F as well as the offences under s 91E. The fact that the applicant received money by virtue of his control of the premises does not seem to me to add further criminality to the offences which he committed under s 91E. It simply describes the way in which the applicant received the money and explains how he was in a position to do so. I am therefore of the view that the offences under 91F, in point of criminality, were almost entirely subsumed in the offences committed under s 91E. I say "almost entirely" since the element of his ownership of the premises which he was obliged to use to prevent any part of them being used for child prostitution of which he was aware (or suffer punishment as provided by s91F) was a feature of his criminality additional to his limited involvement in the management of the brothel and the taking of the proceeds of the prostitutes' work.
9 One of the obvious purposes of the legislation is to discourage child prostitution, which will almost never occur without adult involvement and exploitation. One of the ways of doing so is to require owners of premises in which such prostitution occurs to prevent it. Thus the fact that the applicant also controlled the premises here was an additional feature of criminality. In the circumstances here, however, it was precisely because of the applicant's involvement as owner that the applicant received the tainted money. His physical intervention by checking the books and collecting the cash added little - had he received the proceeds by way of rent, knowing its provenance, his criminality would not have been significantly less: the person who paid him would simply have been his accomplice.
10 The capacity in which an offender receives money contrary to s 91E will always be a most important feature of his or her criminality, as will be the extent to which he or she managed or controlled the prostitute in question and, generally, the events giving rise to the circumstances in which the offender was in a position to exploit the prostitute's vulnerability. Accordingly, it is inevitable that, in sentencing for the offence under s 91E, virtually all elements that subjected the applicant to punishment under s 91F must have been taken into account.
11 In Pearce v The Queen (1998) 194 CLR 610 McHugh, Hayne and Callinan JJ said, at 623 -
"[40] To the extent to which two offences of which an offender stands convicted contain common elements, it would be wrong to punish that offender twice for the commission of the elements that are common. No doubt that general principal must yield to any contrary legislative intention, but the punishment to be exacted should reflect what an offender has done; it should not be affected by the way in which the boundaries of particular offences are drawn. Often those boundaries will be drawn in a way that means that offences overlap. To punish an offender twice if conduct falls in that area of overlap would be to punish offenders according to the accidents of legislative history, rather than according to their just deserts."
12 It is apparent from the passages which I have already cited from the reasons of the learned sentencing judge that she was fully alert to the overlapping features of these offences although, as I have implied, it does not appear that her Honour's language reflected the almost total overlapping that occurred in the circumstances of this case. Be that as it may, the sentences themselves (ignoring the concurrency issue) were virtually identical for each group of sentences.
13 Even complete concurrency would not have adequately dealt with this problem, since the sentences in each group "were flawed because they doubly punished…for a single act" namely the collection of money by a person involved in the management and ownership of a brothel that was the proceeds of child prostitution: cf Pearce 194 CLR at [49]. The mere fact, as is argued by the Crown in this Court, that the effect of the sentences imposed on the applicant was not disproportionate to the overall criminality of his conduct does overcome this fundamental problem (ibid). The situation in this case is to be distinguished from the situation where successive separate offences are committed where problems of overlapping are much less likely to arise. In such cases the problem is to ensure that arithmetical accumulation does not lead to an inappropriately harsh sentence. In the circumstances here the learned sentencing judge overcame this problem by making each offence against each section wholly concurrent. The question is whether making each group of concurrent sentences partially cumulative offended the principle against double punishment.
14 In Pearce the two counts held to be flawed for double punishment despite the concurrency of the sentences imposed for them were as follows:
"Count 9: On 25 June 1994 at Yamba in the State of New South Wales, did maliciously inflict grievous bodily harm upon William George Rixon within intent to do him grievous bodily harm
Count 10: On 25 June 1994 at Yamba in the State of New South Wales, did break and enter the dwelling house of William George Rixon and while therein did inflict grievous bodily harm upon the said William George Rixon."
15 Both of these counts alleged the infliction of grievous bodily harm, count 9 maliciously and with intent to inflict such harm whilst count 10 alleged that it was done when the offender broke and entered the victim's house. (This latter element was, of course, the additional feature.) The offender was sentenced on each of these counts to concurrent and identical sentences. When the matter came back to this Court for re-sentencing in accordance with the majority judgment, the sentence imposed in respect of count 10 was quashed and a fixed term of two years penal servitude to commence on the date upon which the additional term imposed upon count 9 commenced was substituted. It is clear that the approach reflected in this order was to impose a sentence in respect of count 10 which did not involve punishment for the infliction of grievous bodily harm, punishment for which had been incorporated in count 9. The point is, as it seems to me with all respect, that this Court acknowledged that the problem of double punishment was (as the passage above quoted from Pearce points out) not resolved or necessarily resolved by making the sentences for each offence concurrent. I interpolate that this is not merely a question of commonality of the legal elements of the offences. It is necessary, rather, to consider the commonality of facts and circumstances with particular reference to criminality.
16 The learned sentencing judge in the instant case adverted to the fact that, whilst the offender's conviction of the s 91F offences could be justified on the basis that he was the owner of the premises and knew that child prostitution was carried on in them "there was also ample evidence to justify the characterisation of the offender as one who was concerned in the management of the premises, albeit it is accepted that he did not control entry of person or their movement within the premises" and "played no part in accepting or recruiting the girls into the premises as prostitutes no in regulating their working hours".
17 The learned sentencing judge identified two distinct, though connected features of the applicant's criminality in the following way -
"Át the end of the day, the offender played an active role in the management of premises used for acts of child prostitution and he directly received financial benefit, albeit not great, from those acts of child prostitution."