‘Bleeding hearts’

By Ed Merrison
A FERNTREE Gully activist has accused Labor of being a “bleeding heart” government which is soft on crime.
Noel McNamara, whose daughter Tracey was murdered in March 1992, is calling on local people to join a protest outside Parliament at noon on Sunday.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “Let’s balance the scales of justice so they no longer favour the criminal in our society.”
Mr McNamara, chief executive of the Coalition of Crime Victims, has invited members of the State Government and Opposition to attend the protest, at which his group will throw down a pre-election gauntlet.
The Coalition of Crime Victims is calling for the minimum sentence for violent crimes to be set at 50 per cent of the maximum.
This would make 15 years the minimum sentence for murder, which carries a maximum of 30 years.
The group is demanding more police, the abolition of the double jeopardy rule and the scrapping of home detention for culpable driving and hit-and-run offences.
Mr McNamara said juries should have a say in sentencing and that juveniles convicted of what he called ‘adult crimes’ – offences such as murder and rape – should be added to the victims’ register.
“When you think how soft this Labor Government is compared to South Australia and New South Wales, it’s a bleeding heart government while the others are expressing what the community wants,” Mr McNamara said.
But Attorney-General Rob Hulls defended the Bracks Government’s record, saying it had done more than any of its predecessors to assist victims of crime.
Mr Hulls, who will not attend the protest, said the Government had improved victims’ access to compensation, counselling and financial assistance, and had introduced the victims’ register and charter, the latter to take effect from Wednesday, 1 November.
He said the Government had also increased maximum penalties where appropriate, but did not support Mr McNamara’s call for minimum sentences.
“The Bracks Government does not support a simplistic, one-size-fits-all approach to sentencing,” he said.
He said mandatory minimum sentences were not an effective way of reducing crime and made it less likely for offenders to plead guilty, which would lead to more victims having to go through a trial.
Mr Hulls also rejected Mr McNamara’s suggestion that young people guilty of serious crimes be placed on the victims’ register.
“The Government does not believe that children should be treated like adults when they have committed an offence,” he said.
By contrast, Shadow Attorney-General Andrew McIntosh, who will attend the protest, said he would push for serious juvenile criminals to be added to the register, with their names and the circumstances of the crime revealed to the public.
“We think it’s absurd that if a child commits a murder those proceedings are not capable of being published,” he said.
Mr McIntosh said he would “implement a minimum sentence regime” with a range of levels set by judges, and would do away with home detention altogether.
“Home detention is, frankly, a way to get prisoners out of our overcrowded prisons and it’s just not fair dinkum,” he said.
Both parties welcomed public input into the sentencing debate.
“I acknowledge the right and importance of the community participating in these sorts of political questions,” Mr McIntosh said.