4087 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Wednesday 14 November 2007 ______ Mr Speaker (The Hon. George Richard Torbay) took the chair at 10.00 a.m. Mr Speaker read the Prayer and acknowledgement of country. AUDITOR-GENERAL'S REPORT The Speaker tabled, pursuant to section 52A of the Public Finance and Audit Act 1983, the report entitled "Auditor-General's Report 2007—Financial Audits—Volume Four", dated November 2007. Ordered to be printed. WAR MEMORIAL LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (INCREASED PENALTIES) BILL 2007 Agreement in Principle Debate resumed from 5 June 2007. Mr FRANK TERENZINI (Maitland) [10.03 a.m.]: I support the War Memorial Legislation Amendment (Increased Penalties) Bill 2007. This bill gives effect to the commitment made by Premier Morris Iemma during the election campaign to double financial penalties for damaging or desecrating war memorials. It proposes doubling relevant penalty provisions under sections 8 (2) and 8 (3) of the Summary Offences Act 1988, as well as penalties under the Anzac Memorial (Building) Act 1923 and the Anzac Memorial (Building) By-laws 1937. This bill demonstrates that the Iemma Government is keeping its commitment to support our veterans and to protect the memory of those who have fallen for this great country during times of war. It will send a strong message to would-be vandals that if they damage or desecrate our sacred war memorials then they risk serious penalties. I foreshadow the Government's intention to move a further amendment to this bill. As members are aware, this bill was first introduced earlier this year, before being adjourned for the winter recess. During that period the Government considered whether there was perhaps further room for additional penalty provisions to punish and deter war memorial vandals. In doing so, it took into account the fact that when an offence of this nature is serious enough a court may imprison an offender for up to five years if they are charged with malicious damage under section 195 of the Crimes Act. However, it also considered that there would be situations in which the nature of an offence is such that a court might consider the fines currently available to them to be too lenient but imprisonment too harsh. Accordingly, it formed the view that there is a need for a middle rung in the sentencing ladder to provide courts with a clear hierarchy of sentences for punishing an offender who damages or desecrates a war memorial. The Government then examined a range of options. It looked at whether it would be effective to further increase financial penalties beyond doubling them, as already provided for in this bill. However, for incidents that are not deemed serious enough to warrant imprisonment it would be unlikely that a court would impose fines in excess of what is proposed in the bill. This is because people who carry out graffiti, damage, or behave inappropriately around war memorials are typically either juveniles or people of modest economic means. It was also considered that a fine, though effective for punishing offenders at the lower end of the scale, is in some ways an abstract penalty. It does not make the offender face the damage they have caused or the people they have hurt. Nor does it require them to make any kind of tangible reparation to the community. The Government believes that courts should have the option of making vandals who desecrate or damage war memorials face up to the hurt they have caused and make serious reparation to the community. The Government amendment therefore provides that a court may order an offender to perform community service work as punishment for damaging or desecrating a war memorial under the Summary Offences Act 1988. A court could make this order instead of imposing a fine. In doing so, the court could recommend that the offender carry out community service work at a local Returned and Services League or by repairing or restoring 4088 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 14 November 2007 a damaged war memorial. This would require an offender to demonstrate to the community their remorse and make a commitment over an extended period to repay the community. People who have been convicted of other types of offences for which community service orders can already be made have undertaken work at Returned and Services Leagues and memorials. For example, at Lightning Ridge, community service order workers attend to local parks and gardens, including gardens attached to a war memorial. At the South West Rocks Returned and Services League Sub-Branch Memorial Hall, a community service order worker mows lawns and builds shelving. Periodic detainees also currently perform clean-up work at the Kokoda Memorial Track in Concord. I place on the record the fact that in developing this further proposal, the Government has consulted and worked closely with the New South Wales Returned and Services League. The Returned and Services League has given its support to this Government proposal. In a media release issued by the Attorney General earlier this week, the New South Wales Returned and Services League President, Don Rowe, who I notice is in the gallery this morning, said in relation to the Government's proposal: The RSL believes that offenders who commit this crime should make appropriate reparation to the community. They shouldn't just be able to pay for the problem to go away through the payment of a fine—they should be forced to face up to the damage that they have caused. We believe that forcing vandals to do community service work will be a much more appropriate punishment than a mere fine. He went on to add: The RSL and its members are totally behind the Government on this issue. The further amendment that I am foreshadowing would introduce an additional rung in the sentencing ladder between a fine and possible imprisonment, ensuring that there is a range of sentencing options at the lower, middle and higher end of the sentencing spectrum for punishing offenders who damage or desecrate a war memorial. More importantly, it would make an offender face up to their offending behaviour and make appropriate reparation to the community. I commend the amendment and the bill to the House. Ms PRU GOWARD (Goulburn) [10.07 a.m.]: I speak on the War Memorial Legislation Amendment (Increased Penalties) Bill 2007. War memorials are important to all Australian communities. That particularly applies to country areas where sometimes they are the physical centrepieces of the town. Most of the 14 villages in my electorate have war memorials. Often they are war memorial halls or, occasionally, an obelisk or artefact from a war as well as a hall and an honour role. It is significant that we are imposing community service orders on people who vandalise these premises that may require them to repair the damage they have done. Most members will have spent some time on Sunday with their community acknowledging what was once know as Armistice Day and is now Remembrance Day. I had the benefit of doing that at Exeter. Interestingly, a local archivist and historian from the Berrima Historical Society addressed us. She had tracked down every family and the history of each of the six young men from Exeter who died in the First World War. She was able to point to the shop across the road and tell the children in the front row that one of the young men whose name is on the war memorial worked there when he was a boy because his father owned it. The children suddenly realised that there was more to the dingy, dark photographs of young soldiers. They could imagine those young men—some of whom were only 16 or 17 years old—as kids just like themselves working in the shop across the road. It was a very moving address. I think it made each of us recognise not only human frailties but also the humanity of each of the fallen dead. It is time that vandals and people who desecrate war memorials, for reasons ranging from sheer foolishness and foolhardiness to an objection to war, respect those who died and those who built memorials. It is time that vandals recognise that those people died because, right or wrong, and whether or not one agrees with war as a way to resolve conflict, they were prepared to give their lives for it. One of the most telling arguments in favour of a special place for war memorials is what they meant to communities in World War I. Unlike the Americans, we did not bring our dead home; we left them all on the battlefields. In a little town like Exeter, where one in six people went to war, that means that families, brothers, sisters, wives and parents had nothing to remember their boy—no bones, and no headstone to come back to. That is why they built these memorials with such love and care; it was their only way of having a place to go. 14 November 2007 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 4089 We must admit that when we die that is the end of it for us: we go to our maker or we rot in the soil, depending on our views. But the ceremonies of death and remembrance are for those who remain, not for the dead. How terrible it must be for a family not to have anywhere to go to remember their son! That is why communities throughout Australia put such enormous time and effort and spend an inordinate amount of money on building memorials. It is important that the vandals, the young people of today who do these terrible acts, recognise that they are not only desecrating a public place and a symbol of something to which they might philosophically have an objection; they are desecrating a family and a generation's place to go to remember.