PETER KOHN
Caulfield MLA Helen Shardey.
THE Liberal Party has thrown its weight behind the Victorian Government to amend sentencing procedures so judges can take into account a defendant’s hatred for a victim’s religious, ethnic, racial or sexual group.
With state Parliament last week debating the recommendations of a report by the Sentencing Advisory Council, which propose amending the 1991 Sentencing Act to give judges this new latitude in sentencing, the changes seem certain to go ahead now.
Caulfield MLA Helen Shardey welcomed the initiative as an additional weapon in fighting crimes resulting from anti-Semitic attacks on members of the Jewish community and other groups within Victoria.
Her views were strongly supported by her Upper House colleagues for the Southern Region, David Davis and Andrea Coote.
“This is an issue that I have discussed at length with my colleagues, communal leaders and individuals who have been subjected to anti-Semitic violent attacks within my electorate. I offer my full support for its implementation,” Shardey said.
“While the concept makes clear the opportunity for the judiciary to take into account as a factor in sentencing, a racial or religious motive, it will still be up to the sentencing judge to decide what additional penalty will be applied.”
Shardey slammed the state Government’s track record on addressing hate crimes, especially for not acting more quickly to invoke racial and religious tolerance legislation or criminal law following a violent attack on St Kilda East’s Menachem Vorchheimer in 2006.
While Attorney-General Rob Hulls has spoken of a “quiet revolution” in Victoria’s law reform during his government’s decade in power, Opposition frontbenchers used last week’s parliamentary debate to point to a growing spate of violent crimes against ethnic and religious groups.
Shadow attorney-general Robert Clark referred to Vorchheimer during the October 14 debate, stating that Vorchheimer “has been put through enormous delays and difficulties in trying to get any justice for his case, despite it involving a manifest breach of the existing criminal law”.
On the Government side, John Eren, ALP member for Lara, revisited Vorchheimer’s assault, as well as a bashing in St Kilda East in 2007 in which a couple of Jewish teenagers were attacked by two people wielding baseball bats.
