Australia, April 21 -- New South Wales Land and Environment Court issued text of the following judgement on March 21:
1. PRICE AJA: I agree with Dhanji J.
2. DHANJI J: In Pearce v The Queen (1998) 194 CLR 610; [1998] HCA 57, McHugh, Hayne and Callinan JJ said (at [40]), that, when sentencing for multiple offences, while it is necessary to determine an appropriate sentence for each offence, subject to any contrary legislative intention, "the punishment to be exacted should reflect what an offender has done; it should not be affected by the way in which the boundaries of particular offences are drawn". This seemingly simple instruction is often made more difficult by the complexities of multiple charges involving ever more specific offence...