HEADNOTE
[This headnote is not to be read as part of the judgment]
On 13 December 2022, the applicant was sentenced in the District Court after pleading guilty to one State offence of failure to comply with reporting obligations contrary to s 17(1) Child Protection (Offenders Registration) Act 2000 (NSW); and two Commonwealth offences of using carriage service for child abuse material, and possessing child abuse material through a carriage service, respectively contrary to ss 474.22(1) and 474.22A(1) Criminal Code (Cth). The State offence carries a maximum penalty of imprisonment for five years, while the maximum penalty for each of the two Commonwealth offences is 15 years imprisonment. To the extent the applicant has a previous conviction for child abuse offences, a mandatory minimum head sentence of four years applies to each Commonwealth offence under s 16AAB Crims Act 1914 (Cth).
The applicant was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment for the State offence and an aggregate term of four years for the Commonwealth offences. The State sentence was backdated to commence on 4 June 2021 to the effect it had already been served during the applicant's time on remand. The Commonwealth aggregate sentence was wholly accumulated on the State sentence and commenced on the day that fixed term of imprisonment expired. The total effective sentence was one of five years, with a non-parole period of three years and six months.
The applicant appealed against the sentence on the grounds that the sentencing judge erred by (i) sentencing the Commonwealth and State sentences to be served consecutively rather than concurrently; and (ii) failing to apply the principles established in R v Fernando [2002] NSWCCA 28 and Bugmy v The Queen (2013) 249 CLR 571; [2013] HCA 37
The issues before the Court were:
1. whether leave to appeal should be granted under r 3.5(5) Supreme Court (Criminal Appeal) Rules 2021 (NSW) as the applicant's Notice of Appeal was filed after the expiry of the applicable period;
2. whether the sentencing judge erred in wholly accumulating the Commonwealth aggregate sentence on the State sentence; and
3. whether the sentencing judge erred by not expressly referring to R v Fernando or Bugmy v The Queen, to the effect he had failed to have regard to relevant mitigatory considerations.
The Court held (per Campbell J, Kirk JA and N Adams J agreeing), dismissing the appeal:
As to Issue (1):
Being without legal representation is a disadvantage and not a privilege, and leave would not ordinary be granted merely because a party is self-represented. However, the applicant's Notice of Intention to Appeal expired while he was represented (for the limited purpose of obtaining advice as to the merits of the application for leave to appeal), and the applicant had been unaware that no application had been made to preserve his position. Leave to appeal granted.
As to Issue (2):
The sentencing judge was alive to the complications which flowed from imposing separate State and Commonwealth sentences at the same sitting and followed the guidance in Director of Public Prosecutions (Vic) v Swingler [2017] VSCA 305; 269 A Crim R 526, and Director of Public Prosecutions (Cth) v Beattie [2017] NSWCCA 301; 270 A Crim R 556. There was no obligation on the sentencing judge to import a degree of concurrency between the State and Commonwealth offences. Given the nature of the State offending was different to the Commonwealth offending (where the emphasis is not on the contact per se, but rather the "very fact of failing to comply with the requirements of the [CPOR Act]": Bisiker v R [2022] NSWCCA 110 (per Kirk JA at [23]-[25]), cumulation was an appropriate and available approach to address the respective criminality involved.
As to Issue (3):
The sentencing judge had regard to the applicant's subjective circumstances and fully accepted that those matters operated in mitigation in particular to reduce the applicant's culpability to a certain extent. It was unnecessary to refer to the relevant authorities when neither the applicant nor the Crown referred to them in their oral or written submissions, and in any event, it is evident that the sentencing judge in his reasons correctly applied the principles derived from those authorities. The total effective sentence passed was necessarily stern to reflect the Commonwealth Parliament's intention in enacting Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Crimes Against Children and Community Protection Measures) Act 2020 (Cth).