The High Court has made orders by consent between the parties, allowing an appeal against a decision of the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal on the sentencing of paedophiles. The defendant pled guilty to a series of child sexual assaults committed between 2004 and 2014, and was sentenced in the New South Wales District Court to an aggregate term of 13 years imprisonment. The Crown appealed against the sentence, contending that it was manifestly inadequate, as demonstrated by errors in the judge’s assessment of the sentence. The NSWCCA allowed the Crown’s appeal, concluding that the sentencing judge did make a number of errors that may reflect the inadequacy, specifically in making no finding on the objective seriousness of the offending, and not properly appreciating the importance of deterrence, making the sentence inadequate. The NSWCCA also noted that even if those errors did not ’cause’ the inadequacy, the sentence was plainly unjust, Continue reading →

The High Court has made orders by consent between the parties, allowing an appeal against a decision of the Federal Court on fact findings on the current status of ethnic conflicts. The applicant, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, sought refugee protection on the basis of his membership of the Kasai-Luba ethnic group, which he alleged was subject to persecution by the Katangan-Lunda group. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal concluded that on the country information before it the applicant did not face a real chance of serious harm due to his ethnicity, but cited only a 2006 International Crisis Group report which referred only to ‘tensions’, and did not cite or refer to a number of later reports from various bodies which illustrated risks of genocide, war crimes and ongoing ethnic conflict. A single-judge Federal Court rejected the Continue reading →