Our Justice Decisions !

Many New South Wales citizens will be angered to hear that a United Nations Human Rights Committee has had the temerity to question a life sentence handed down to the members of a rape gang responsible for a brutal 1988 murder.   Janine Balding ( 20 ) returned from work on the train and was about to enter her car in a railway station car park when she was set upon by a gang of young thugs, forced into her car and driven on a wild journey across the city where she was repeatedly brutally raped.  Finally, she was hog tied - and drowned in a muddy dam.

All the criminals involved received a life sentence, with no possibility of parole - and they are still in jail !     Mathew Elliott was 20 years old at the time and Bronson Blessington was 14.   This United Nations Committee is now claiming that our life sentence verdict is too harsh - and it breaches the Convention of Civil and Political Rights.   They claim it allows no genuine chance of release even with full rehabilitation.

Of course this takes no account of Janine Baldings civil and political rights.  The public of this state have a distaste for violent criminals who viciously inflict rape as part of a wolf pack and the murderers of Anita Cobby got similar treatment.   Then there were the ethnic rape gangs that terrorised western Sydney and that is resulting in Bilal Skaf spending most of the remainder of his life in the Supermax prison.

The punishment for crime has always been the prerogative of the society in which it is committed. That is common across the entire world, and is one of the reasons that each jurisdiction forms laws that suit the standards and expectations of it's citizens.  There are laws in place in other countries with which we do not agree, but that is not our business and we do not consciously interfere or try and force our will on others.

The attorney general of this state intends to ignore the bleatings of this UN Committee - and rightly so.   Would we ever want Ivan Milat to walk free again in our society ?   It seems that the United Nations is tending to frown on all forms of long sentencing and is trying to force a release clause to apply irrespective of the type of crime committed - and in complete defiance of community expectations.

Of course this question again raises the matter of the death penalty.  It is not entirely out of the question that it could return to Australia.  If it does so, it will be at the behest of community demand and the most probable cause would be as punishment for those committing jihad by setting explosives in public places and murdering innocent citizens by way of a form of civil war.

Would we really want to fill our prisons with fanatics with no prospect of rehabilitation and whose aim was to be free to again slaughter all those who refuse to convert to their religion ?   If having a cup of coffee in a cafe or visiting a market was a risk that had to be taken because of random bombings - as is the case in many other parts of the world - would we not consider death as an appropriate punishment ?

That old saying -  " If you do the crime,  you do the time  "  - comes to mind !   But there are some crimes that go so far beyond reasonable expectations that no amount of time will square the books !