A former chief justice of the High Court, Sir Gerard Brennan, yesterday called for an end to mandatory sentencing on the same day as the laws were used to jail a man for stealing a packet of biscuits.

Sir Gerard, who has rarely entered public debate since his retirement in 1998, condemned as immoral the mandatory sentencing laws of Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

"Putting mandatory sentencing into law and locking up people in under-resourced prisons are cheap ways of satisfying a populist law and order cry, but they create grave risks," Sir Gerard told The Age.

"The punishment must fit both the crime and the criminal."

His attack yesterday came on the day that a 21-year-old man was sentenced to one year in jail for stealing $23 worth of biscuits from a mine on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory. The magistrate, Mr Greg Cavanagh, questioned the benefit of sending Jamie Wurramara to jail after finding him guilty of stealing the biscuits on or about Christmas Day 1998.

Mr Cavanagh was legally bound to hand down the sentence by an NT law that makes a 12-month jail term compulsory for any third property offence.

Controversy over mandatory sentencing has been revived by the suicide recently of a 15-year-old Aboriginal boy who had been jailed in Darwin for stealing less than $100 worth of stationery.

In his statement to The Age yesterday, Sir Gerard said: "The offender becomes the victim of senseless retribution and the magistrate or judge is brutalised by being forced to act unjustly."

Another former High Court judge, Sir Ronald Wilson, also condemned mandatory sentencing yesterday.

"The Governments have had their heads in the sand saying the community wants these laws and that is what they are going to give them," he said. "I thought the essence of political leadership was working through the issues and working out what was best for the community."

The former judges' statements came as the Federal Government yesterday appeared to leave open the option of intervening to override mandatory sentencing laws.

The Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, met the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, and was reported to have reacted "positively" to requests for more Government action despite a widening split within the coalition.

However, a source close to Mr Howard said later that was overstating the case.

Among those at the meeting were the Australian of the Year, Sir Gustav Nossal, and the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation chairwoman Ms Evelyn Scott, who both wept at a press conference on the issue on Sunday.

"We told him (Mr Howard) we felt incredibly deeply about that 15-year-old kid," Sir Gustav said yesterday.

"We recommended that the Federal Government look at what it could do further to what the Attorney-General had already done."

Australia now faces international scrutiny on the laws, with UN secretary-general, Mr Kofi Annan, expected to be given a detailed briefing during his visit to Australia over the next few days.

back