Director of Public Prosecutions v Goldstraw

[2025] VCC 1669

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA

AT MELBOURNE

CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

Revised

Not Restricted

Suitable for Publication

CR-25-01442

CR-25-01443

Indictment No: C2401192

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

CHARLES EDWARD GOLDSTRAW

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE TINNEY
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	12 November 2025
DATE OF SENTENCE:	14 November 2025
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Goldstraw
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2025] VCC 1669

REASONS FOR SENTENCE

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Catchwords:  Arson and intentionally cause bushfire. Second offence occurring after bailed on first matter of arson. 24 years of age at time. 25 now. Some relevant criminal history – Early guilty plea; full admissions – serious mental illness the driver; R v Verdins [2007] VSCA 102 –all limbs . destruction of DFFH house as dissatisfied with it. $260,000 damage . Made 000 call himself. Second matter occurring whilst homeless. Fire lit in large grassland area in built up area with proximity to structures including Aged Care Home. 19 units attended; Serious arson offender

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Ms Liantzakis	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Ms E. Strugnell	Victoria Legal Aid

HIS HONOUR:

1Charles Edward Goldstraw, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of arson and one charge of intentionally causing a bushfire. These offences arose from two separate incidents last year.

2You had been admitted to bail following the first offence and hence were on bail at the time of committing the second.

3Each offence has a 15 year maximum penalty.

4Your date of birth is in December 1999, and so you were only 24 years of age at the time of the offending but are almost 26 now.

5You have admitted a short criminal history which your counsel concedes has some relevance to my task, containing as it does a number of past appearances, including one prior appearance for attempted arson. I do not lose sight of the fact that all but one of the matters were finalised in the Children's court and all of your past appearances involved without conviction dispositions.

6There is an agreed written prosecution summary dated 13 October 2025. I will sentence in accordance with that agreed document. It was marked as Exhibit A on the plea. As part of the plea, some footage from your phone was played and that was marked as part of the same exhibit. The written summary, which was read aloud, referred off to other material within the depositions, for instance the 000 calls made by you, as well as a number of photographs, and the video of you at the time of the first fire. There is also reference to your police interview. I have regard to that material. There was also some material placed before me by the prosecution without objection, including an asset assessment document spelling out the monetary amount of the damage occasioned by the arson charge. There was also an email which listed the extent of resources deployed to fight the two fires. See Exhibit B. The asset assessment document has some photos of the house taken post the fire, but it also gives a decent sense of your living conditions before the fire. The house was a complete shambles.

7Given the written summary is an agreed one, I will provide only a relatively brief summary of the agreed facts so that my reasons and the ultimate sentence which I will soon impose upon you, might make sense to anyone who happens to read these remarks when they come to be published on Otherwise, there would be no information as to the nature of the crimes and the sentence would exist in a complete vacuum.

8As the summary makes clear, you were not happy with the property you had been living in at 22 Aldergate Crescent, Kings Park. That is an understatement. This was a Department of Families, Fairness and Housing home and you had been the sole tenant there for a number of years. Quite simply, you set fire to the property on the evening of the 20th of October 2024. Smoke was detected by one of the neighbours who rang 000 and Fire Rescue Victoria arrived and started to fight the fire. Four units attended. You rang 000 yourself and told the operator that you needed to speak to the police as you were ‘on the run.’ You admitted setting fire to your property.  You were coy as to providing your personal details or whereabouts, and said you wanted to negotiate your surrender. You rang them a second time, this time providing your name and location, and there was other information in that 000 call of course. Police attended at that location and were unable to find you but located you a short time later and arrested you.

9You were interviewed later that evening, in the presence of an independent third person, and you made very full admissions, pointing out the desperation of your act. You said you had attempted to have the property repaired and set fire to it so that you would have to be moved. The reasons for your dissatisfaction with the property, and your desire to be free of the property, may not have been based on reality. It is plain from some of the materials placed before me by your counsel that you held some delusions at the time, including as to your neighbours. As to the state of the house, undoubtedly the actual house was in a completely shambolic state, but it seems likely you have contributed to the condition of the property.  You had been living there for all those years. I note the extensive graffitiing on the walls and some of your admissions made in the interview as to putting holes in walls.  You described the dreadful state of the toilet and maggots in the house, and faeces on the floor and the walls, and rats coming through the holes, but then later on of course, you said that you had actually caused some of the damage to the walls.  I want to make clear I am not dealing with you for damaging the house, other than of course by reference to the fire that you lit. What is plain is that whoever was responsible, your living conditions viewed objectively, were dreadful. As to the lighting of the fire, you understood there would be some consequences for you, including perhaps a fine or stint in gaol but that was not enough to stop you.  You also recognised other consequences, both in admissions made in the interview and in the 000 call, as to the risk of spread of the fire.  As you said in the interview, you cannot control fire, and you cannot.  That is one of the risks posed by this sort of conduct. You were very obviously though in a disturbed state.  There is just no question about that.

10You provided access to your phone to the police, and in the video gallery on that device there was a video that you took of you starting or at least observing the fire, with you saying things excitedly such as, ‘look at that… it's so free… it's beautiful it's so engulfing and beautiful… what else can I burn… I'm done living here’. There were more things than that said, and anyone doubting your disturbed state would just need to view that footage, and no more. You were charged and bailed.  The summary refers to the analysis of the arson chemist. I will not spell out his conclusions.  The document does that.  It was a pretty determined effort to commit this arson, and it was successful.

11Having been bailed, about a month later on the morning of 23 November 2024, you started another fire. It was no laughing matter. It was lit in the morning of a sunny hot day with a strong North Westerly wind. You set fire to some grassland at 42 Deveny Road, Epping. There was about 50,000 square metres of overgrown grassland and bush at that address, and it was surrounded by roads and a commercial car park for the Northern Hospital and the Epping Plaza on one side, and to the East, there was a McDonald's and an aged care facility that had up to 100 to 160 elderly residents, as well as an event centre. Happily, no one had to be evacuated.

12Twenty-two members of the public phoned the 000 number to report smoke coming from the grassland. This was early in the morning at about 8:50 am on that day, and a number of units from Fire Rescue Victoria attended and sought to control the fire. 19 units attended. Each with a crew. It took some time to bring the fire under control. You were captured on the CCTV using a payphone presumably to call 000, for again you did that. You said to the operator the call was about the fire, but this time did not make admissions in the course of that call.

13It took about 60 minutes for Fire Rescue Victoria to control the fire and then the blacking out operations commenced. There were some arial photographs taken by a drone that show the extent of the damage.  Police were notified and at one point you approached a couple of police members and asked for their assistance to locate an alleged offender for an unrelated incident. Having lit this fire, you were hardly making yourself scarce.  You were hanging around at the scene. You were in a heightened and erratic state, and that obviously drew some suspicion to you. You were found to have two cigarette lighters. You were taken by ambulance to hospital under the provisions of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act.   

14Upon being released from hospital, you were later arrested at your address in crisis accommodation on the 5 December and taken to the Mill Park Police station for interview but were not fit to be interviewed. You were charged and have remained in custody since. Your counsel placed before me your prison indent dealing with your movements within prison and took me through that in some detail. I will not repeat all of that detail in my reasons. There was a document provided to the court from Forensicare dealing with your current position. I was told that in the event you were not remaining in prison, that you no longer meet the criteria for compulsory treatment. See Exhibit D.

15There is a procedural chronology attached to the agreed summary.  That chronology includes dates where the matter was adjourned on your behalf to consider issues under the Crimes (Mental Impairment and Unfitness to be Tried) Act 1997) . There were also some unsuccessful bail applications.

16So much then for my brief summary of the agreed summary. As I have said, I will sentence pursuant to the more detailed agreed summary marked as Exhibit A. There was no need for me to mark the interview or the 000 calls or the photographs or video stills.  

Impact

17I turn now to the impact of your crimes.

18There are no impact statements here, but that is not to say there was no impact. You have pretty much destroyed a DFFH house.  $260,000 damage was caused by you and that property has hence been reduced pretty much to land value. A number of units turned out to fight the fire and you recognised in the 000 call the risk of spread of the fire and the danger of that. It was one of the reasons you rang. The fire was in a suburban street, but happily was brought under control swiftly enough.  As to the ‘bushfire’, a large number of firefighting units had to fight it. There was smoke and it was rung in by 22 concerned members of the public. It was close to an Aged Care facility and that was of obvious concern to those fighting it.  As I have said, happily, no evacuation was required.

In Mitigation

19Ms Strugnell conducted the plea in mitigation on your behalf. As usual, she was very well prepared and your legal team had plainly done a lot of work behind the scenes chasing down materials to try to assist you. If I may say so, you have been very well represented by your legal team and Ms Strugnell has said everything that could be said on your behalf. She relied upon a written outline of submissions for the plea dated 11 November 2025, as well as two reports from a psychiatrist, Dr Darjee. There were a range of other written materials, including various MHARS reports and hospital reports, as well as a number of reports or letters some from Code Black psychology including a very recent updated report. There were also VCAT orders, your prison indent showing your movements, a medication list and letters from Alyson Hart of LEAD Consulting, the NDIS provider.

20I was provided with a large amount of detail as to your personal history, with coverage of your family make-up as well as your educational, employment, drug/alcohol use and physical and mental health background. There was a perfectly understandable strong focus on mental health issues over the course of your life, including at the time of the offending and since you have been held in custody.

21Ms Strugnell addressed me as to the objective gravity of the offences and as to the relevant sentencing purposes in play here and how they might be best addressed. She addressed me as to the relevance of your past criminal history and made some submissions to the court as to your prospects of rehabilitation and how they might best be maximised.

22In the very thorough plea in mitigation conducted on your behalf, Ms Strugnell relied principally upon the following matters in mitigation:

·     Your early guilty plea and the admissions made earlier still;

·     The presence of some remorse;

·     Your relative youth;

·     The application of the six limbs from the case of Verdins v The Queen[1];

[1]R v Verdins [2007] VSCA 102 (‘Verdins’)

23Your counsel conceded that this was serious offending, but argued that owing to the arrangements which could be put in place with the NDIS as spoken of in
Ms Hart's letter and in that recent Code Black report, a combination type sentence was open to the court here, one that did not expose you to any further time in custody over and above your existing pre-sentence detention.

Prosecution

24The prosecutor, Ms Liantzakis, had prepared some written sentencing submissions dated 12 November 2025, which were marked as Exhibit C.  She also made some brief oral submissions in the course of the plea. The Crown addressed me as to the nature and gravity of the offending. See para 6(a)-(j).  I checked with your counsel and it was apparent that really none of the submissions, dealing with the assessment of the gravity of the offending, either written or oral, were in any way controversial..

25The Crown after all accepted the application of limbs 1 and 3-6 from the case of Verdins.

26The Director did not accept that a combination type disposition was appropriate or fell within the sound exercise of my sentencing discretion and it was only to that extent they were challenging the application of limb 2 of that case. They placed before me a table of comparable cases. I have read them all since the plea. They were replete with differences and as I suspected, they did not give me much assistance at all.

27The Director of Public Prosecutions was calling for a head sentence with a non-parole period.

28I should make plain that whilst I will not ignore any submission made to me by either party, I am not bound by any submission made by either party as to sentence. I have to exercise my own sentencing discretion.

Background

29I will deal with the various matters raised in due course. Before doing so I will set out some detail as to your background. I will be quite brief as I have no reason not to accept the account placed before me by Ms Strugnell. I will not repeat it all. I see no need.

30There is much coverage of your background in the first report of Dr Darjee, as well as in your counsel's written outline from paragraphs 3 to 5(g).

31I have said already, you were born in December 1999 and so were only 24 years old at the time of these crimes last year. You are now 25, turning 26 in a few weeks.  You are the eldest of two children with a father who works in finance and a mother who works in pastoral care. Your younger brother is a law student. You were raised in Melbourne and there were early issues of concern leading to various diagnoses, including autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. These were diagnosed in early childhood and were the start of a long-term connection to mental health services over the course of your life. You were prescribed medication at an early age. Schooling presented some challenges with a level of support required. There was one mention of there being an intellectual disability, but that seems not to be the case, and that reference was disavowed by Ms Strugnell.

32So as I say, there was a level of support required to keep you at school. You were expelled from a number of schools due to your behaviour. The first report of
Dr Darjee says that you went on to attend a special school. In fact you did not, and I was told you attended Caulfield Grammar from Year 7 to Year 10 but that you needed much support. Your parents could no longer manage your behaviour and in your mid-teens, at the age of 14 I was informed, you were placed into residential care until the age of 18.

33That was not a positive experience for you. It seldom is.

34You had done some work as a soccer coach and delivering pamphlets but have not worked as an adult and receive the disability support pension and have since the age of 18. Your finances are managed by the State Trustees. Dr Darjee's report sets out quite some detail of your psychiatric history, as do some of the other written materials placed before me. This includes your state at stages in 2024 including in June 2024 when apparently you were misdiagnosed. I am not going to set out all this detail. There has been long term mental health engagement with very many admissions, including numerous episodes of involuntary treatment.  There have been varying diagnoses over the course of your life.  I was told you were diagnosed with schizophrenia at about the age of 15. The precise age though is not critical, you undoubtably suffer from that serious mental illness.  There is no question about that.

35After leaving residential care, you lived in St Albans and also in the Kings Park area, that later area is where you committed the arson offence the subject of Charge 1. You must have a very sizeable NDIS package, you said you did during the police interview and that must be so, given the level of services proposed by Code Black and Ms Hart.

36You have had significant and long-term issues with various drugs of dependence and with alcohol and have not always been consistent in taking your prescribed medication. That may be so but drugs and alcohol do not seem to be implicated in this offending, and you were not taking medication, as there had been some revision of your diagnosis in June 2024, an inaccurate and unfortunate revision as is clear from the reports of Dr Darjee.

37You have a handful of past appearances before the Court. It is a relatively short history with only one adult court appearance and the balance in the Children's Court. You served such sentences as were imposed and so do not fall to be sentenced a second time for any of those past matters. Nor do they aggravate the offending or remove the need for me to engage in a proportionate response to the offending I am dealing with. All that is so, but your counsel accepted that your past criminal, as short as it is, does have some relevance to my task and that is because I must make judgments as to your prospects of rehabilitation, your risk of reoffence and the extent of the need to pay weight to community protection and specific deterrence. I am not going to set out the history spelt out in that document. You have committed a number of criminal damage offences over the years. There are dishonesty and Bail Act offences but also an attempted arson, threats to kill and/or inflict serious injury and assaults. You have breached a number of court orders.

38As I said, the second charge on the indictment was committed whilst you were bailed in relation to the arson matter. It is obvious enough from the materials that you present a real risk of offending in a like manner and that I must try to deter you and protect the community from you.

39I have not mentioned but I do so now - you still have contact with your parents and brother and have been receiving visits from some of them and speaking to them on the phone. Of course that is a positive.

40I have not set out anything like the full details of your background. I said that I would not. I do take your background into account as was placed before me.

Guilty Plea

41I turn now to some of the other matters raised on the plea, the first of those being your guilty plea. You pleaded guilty at an early opportunity and were cooperative with the police and made full admissions earlier still in relation to the arson matter. I take these matters into account in your favour.

42Your guilty plea is of real importance.

43You have taken responsibility for your crimes at an early stage by pleading guilty. That is important. You were very co-operative with the police and made full admissions in relation to the arson.  You were not in a fit state to be interviewed in relation to the second matter and that was not your fault. It was a product of your serious mental illness.

44As a result of your guilty plea, the time, cost and the effort of a committal in the lower court or a trial up in this court has all been avoided.  

45All the many witnesses who might have been called to give evidence have been spared the experience of coming along to court and giving evidence.

46You must be rewarded for facilitating the course of justice.

47I take these various matters into account in mitigation.

Remorse

48As to remorse, well yes, you took early responsibly. Your counsel focussed on the early guilty plea and what could be implied from that, but she really could not take me to any other evidence. In the 000 call, you were concerned about the risk of spread of the first fire to others, that was a good thing actually, I am not saying it was not, but that is not evidence of remorse for what you had done to the house. You were justifying that in the police interview and still do, to a degree. That is not to be critical of you. I am sure that state of affairs is produced by your mental illness so I do not hold it against you in any way. It is just that it makes it harder to find genuine remorse if that is the way you feel.

49A guilty plea can be indicative of some remorse, but that is not always the position.

50Beyond what might be implied from your guilty plea, it is hard to see much real remorse on display here.  As I say, it is probably a product of your illness that you may not feel much actual remorse for the crimes.

51I am ultimately prepared to find that you do have some remorse for these crimes. I take that into account in your favour.

Youth

52I turn briefly then to your relative youth. You are a relatively young person, though plainly not a youthful first offender. Your relative youth is still of importance to my sentencing task. I apply the principles in relation to the sentencing of youthful offenders to my task, adapted as they must be, to one of your age and experience before the courts. So I do have regard to the principles from cases such as Mills[2] and Azzopardi[3].

[2]R v Mills (1998) 4 VR 235 ('Mills')

[3]Azzopardi v The Queen [2011] VSCA 372 ('Azzopardi')

53Young people are not fully mature and nor are their brains. Young people are less able or likely to think through the consequences of their actions and they are more likely to act unwisely. When dealing with a youthful offender, greater emphasis is placed on rehabilitation. Young people are more likely to be amenable to rehabilitation. It can easily be forgotten that the community needs no protection at all from someone who is actually rehabilitated. Young people are generally speaking, viewed by the law as being less culpable, and the benchmark for sending them to prison is an understandably high one. We, as judges, know that young offenders are more likely to be corrupted by the influences which exist in a prison setting.  It can in fact be quite counter-productive to incarcerate a youthful offender in the name of community protection. These are not simply my views. These are principles that have been developed by the Courts over many decades. Sometimes, of course, confinement is just unavoidable. The fact is, the more serious the crime, the less weight is available to give to youth and to rehabilitation. More weight is given to matters such as punishment, deterrence and community protection. Anyway, I apply those principles to my task. You were only 24 at the time and you are still only 25. I observed on the plea that these crimes are far more a product of your mental health predicament than youthful exuberance or inconsequential thinking borne out of youth.

Verdins

54I deal now with the Verdins' submissions. I suppose I could spend the next 20 minutes trawling my way through the written materials, including the reports of
Dr Darjee and the written submissions and where would that get me? Or you, for that matter? It would get me to the same end destination which I now pronounce.  It is as plain as day that you were not exercising anything remotely like optimum judgement on these occasions. You were very unwell indeed. You have a raft of serious mental health issues and did at the time. They are plainly linked to the offending, not just with some 'realistic connection’ which would be enough to enliven the principles from Verdins. Your mental illness was very much causative of the offences, and Dr Darjee says as much. I accept that is so. I would hardly need his say so given the summary, the 000 calls, the interview with police and the bizarre phone footage, as well as the lack of any sensible motivation.  You burnt down your home and ended up living in a tent in a paddock. The phone footage alone would make a compelling case as to the high level of disturbed thinking operative at the time of the first offence. At the time of the second offence you were not even in a fit state to be interviewed and were detained under the provisions of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act.

55You were plainly not travelling at all well at the time of these offences. You were labouring under the effects of your serious mental illness. You were schizophrenic, and you were delusionally so. This is not a case, as sometimes exists, where there was some cursory examination and swift diagnosis reached after a brief video link assessment.  There is a wealth of contemporaneous material speaking of your progress through the mental health system and your illness and how you presented at the time.  So I am satisfied you are and were suffering from schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. That will not change. You were delusional. Further, even beyond your being received on remand, you have engaged with a number of mental health professionals with various admissions in custody including to Thomas Embling. You have remained throughout your time on remand in prison sections devoted to those with mental illness. I note that
Dr Darjee saw you in prison (you were in Thomas Embling at that stage) and also assessed your presentation in prison from the records available to him and
Ms Strugnell spelt out your various movements within prison. I will not repeat it all.

56Now, I have to be a little bit careful. I cannot sentence you on the basis of your having a defence of mental impairment. You do not. The report supports that defence and there is reference in your counsel's outline on more than one occasion to that conclusion, but the short answer is that you have chosen not to run that defence.  A decision one would think likely influenced by the probable outcome of a successful mental impairment defence, namely an indefinite supervision order. Your legal team would have been required to discuss these matters with you. I do not doubt that they did, they are extremely diligent. You plainly are fit to plead, there is no question about that, and you have chosen to admit your guilt. You have admitted all the elements of each offence. You have admitted the act and the relevant intention, and by your guilty plea you have not asserted the defence of mental impairment. As a matter of law, you are presumed not to have been suffering from a mental impairment until the contrary is proved. Had there been a trial, the onus would have rested on you to prove the defence on the balance of probabilities. I cannot sentence you on the basis that you actually meet either limb of the definition of mental impairment under the Crimes (Mental Impairment and Fitness to be Tried) Act.  See for instance para 6(d) of the defence outline.  I am not dealing with you under the Crimes (Mental Impairment and Fitness to be Tried) Act, though in a way the style of CCO I was being asked to impose had many of the hallmarks of an NCSO, just not the length. The Crown did not obtain their own report. They did not need to, as the defence was not being run. For all I know, another expert may have reached a quite different view focusing on the 000 call, the initial refusal to give your name and the admissions in the interview, including as to the likely consequences of your criminal acts, including gaol.  Focussing on the fact that you were handing yourself in and seeking to surrender to police.

57Anyway, I am not dealing with any such defence. Ms Strugnell accepted that the court cannot use that material to controvert or somehow traverse the plea.  It is still obviously permissible for me to act on the material placed before me. See Lucas v the Queen [2012] VSCA 245. That is, that you had a mental state that fell short of the defence of mental impairment, but one which undoubtedly satisfies the requirements of Verdins, and handsomely, if I may say so. You were plainly most unwell.

58You have a serious lifelong mental illness. There can be no doubt that your conditions significantly impaired your capacity to exercise appropriate judgement and make calm and rational decisions. It obscured the full understanding of the wrongfulness of the act. Plainly there is a very sizeable reduction in your moral culpability. As I said a moment ago, your eroded mental health courtesy of your illness did not just have a realistic connection to the offending; it was the driver. I am satisfied it was causative of the offences. Without the mental illness, you likely would not have so acted. As to limb two, the Crown did not concede that the condition led to the capacity to select the kind of sentence your counsel was asking me to impose. That is as far as that issue went. No one was saying your condition had no bearing on my sentencing task. Plainly it does. Plainly there can be very sizeable reduction in the weight given to general and specific deterrence. I do not accept that either is completely eliminated, but you are very evidently not the appropriate vehicle for the full weight to be given to deterrence, specific or general. General deterrence in fact has very little work in my sentencing exercise. Specific deterrence has a bit more of a role to play, but is still sizeably moderated here. Plainly also, there is an increased custodial burden posed by your conditions and I am prepared to find that there is a significant risk of serious deterioration. I find then that each limb of Verdins is made out here.

59Of course your condition, whilst bringing about some mitigation, also assumes some importance when I come to consider risk and community protection. It is accepted that the same condition clearly elevates your risk and heightens the need for community protection. You are still quite insightless as to your illness. Even after many months in prison in a controlled environment, you were still floridly psychotic when seen by Dr Darjee in July.  Your ability to act in a dangerous fashion, your interest in and use of fire is worrying. You told the emergency department that you, 'like fires'.  See Darjee's first report p3 bottom paragraph. You can very evidently commit such acts for no good reason objectively, but in a setting where you believe there is justification. How does anyone remove that mindset or predict the impact of delusional thought on your actions? There are complex issues in play here, and the extent of the measures said to be necessary in the Code Black report sum up your level of risk generally. Virtually one on one supervision is required.

Rehabilitation

60I turn now to your prospects of rehabilitation. You do have a complex risk profile because of the interplay of a variety of factors, including your mental illness and substance abuse. Your illness and the strength of your beliefs and lack of insight are problematic. So too a preparedness to use drugs and alcohol and on occasions in the past not to voluntarily use the appropriate medication. You are still quite insightless as to your illness, and still it would seem, suffer from a delusional mindset. As I have said, you were still floridly psychotic when seen by Dr Darjee. Then, you still had the troublesome voice of a non-existent person, 'Scotty' whispering into your ear. There is a placement available for you in a unit in South Melbourne and the Code Black report speaks of all the things needed to manage the high risk. It is a very, very long list indeed. It is virtually one on one full time support. Two on one at night with no capacity for you to ever be left alone in the community or in the house. The report also speaks of fires other than the two I am dealing with and the one in your past criminal history.

61This was serious offending and your counsel accepted it was more difficult to deter you than one without your illness. That is one of the reasons why there is moderation of the weight given to specific deterrence. So, it is not a setting as often enough applies where the process of being interviewed by the police, charged, imprisoned and sentenced for these crimes can be expected to achieve a significant deterrent effect. It may play some role in deterring you, but I am not that confident of that.

62You have a short but relevant criminal history. You have breached Court orders in the past. You have little remorse for your conduct, no doubt a state produced by your mental illness and you can still justify it in your mind even now.  Your serious mental illness, is lifelong and seemingly to this point has not greatly responded to the medication you are taking. I accept there might be different medication with a better effect than is available to you in a non-prison setting. Hopefully there is. There is still some family support and a high level of support and structure available through the NDIS.

63What then of your prospects of rehabilitation?

64I can ultimately only be guarded as to your future prospects.

65I find that you do have some prospects of rehabilitation into the future.  I am not greatly optimistic as to those prospects, but am prepared to find they are reasonable subject to a power of work by you and others. The risk of re-offence is very real, very tangible in this case.

Serious offender provisions

66As I will be sentencing you to terms of imprisonment in relation to each charge, you will fall to be sentenced as a serious arson offender in relation to Charge 2 and only that charge. The prior matter in the criminal history for attempted arson was dealt with in the Children's Court and with a non-custodial outcome and so that is not a qualifying offence.  In relation to Charge 2, the protection of the community is the principal purpose of sentencing. To achieve that purpose, a court has the power to impose a disproportionate sentence. That is not required here and I will pass only proportionate sentences. The serious offender provisions also remove the presumption of concurrency of sentence and to an extent then, modify the principle of totality, which I will mention later in my reasons. That presumption of concurrency would not apply to the second sentence anyway given you were on bail at the time of the commission of that offence.  (See s 16(1A)(e)).

Current Sentencing Practice

67I am required to take into account current sentencing practices and I do. It is not a controlling factor.

68I have done as I said I would and looked at the case collections as exists on the Judicial College of Victoria on-line sentencing site. I have looked at the Sentencing Advisory Council online statistics pertaining to each of these offences.

69What has happened in other cases does not operate as some precedent. There is after all no such thing as one correct sentence to be imposed by a court. 

70Statistical material is inherently limited. Statistics provide none of the detail of the offence or of the offender. None of the matters in mitigation or aggravation are disclosed in the statistical data. Virtually all of the things which might explain the sentence therefore are absent. They are just numbers.

71I am exercising a sentencing discretion in relation to your crimes. What has happened in other cases, or as is disclosed in the statistical data that is kept in relation to past sentences, can never provide the answer to my task.

72I have looked at the three cases to which I was referred. There are many differences, some in your favour, some not. They really do not assist me.

73Let me deal then with the gravity of your offences.

Gravity of Offences

74The agreed summary describes your offending. I am required to consider the gravity of the offence before the court. I will not repeat all the Crown submissions. They were not controversial. Ms Strugnell conceded the seriousness of this offending, arguing that the offences fell at the mid-range viewed purely objectively. I agree with that submission. There are obviously far more serious examples of each offence and for that matter, a number of less serious examples.  These were each serious enough given the nature of the damage to the house and the risks involved and for that matter, the setting of the second fire, lit as it was in a large area of grassland and bush in the built-up area with various structures in the vicinity including an aged care centre. This was a fire lit on the morning of a hot windy day in November.

75You were on bail at the time of that fire.

Purposes

76I have to consider a number of purposes of sentencing.  Rehabilitation is only one of those purposes.

77You are still a relatively young man and have reasonable prospects. Of course I have regard to rehabilitation.

78I must give appropriate weight to the other purposes of sentencing.  I am required to punish you justly and proportionately.  I must also denounce your conduct.  

79I have already mentioned the very minimal role for general deterrence in this case, and the very sizable reduction in the weight be given to specific deterrence owing to your mental illness. You are not the appropriate vehicle for either to assume much importance.

80Community protection is in a different position altogether. I must pay regard to the need to protect the community from you. That purpose is a significant one in my sentencing task. These crimes were serious enough. They are potentially dangerous to members of the public. You have committed attempted arson before. You committed the second offence whilst on bail for the first and have very limited insight. The illness that leads to the mitigatory application of the Verdins' limbs, including reduction of your moral culpability and moderation of deterrence, obviously heightens your risk of re-offending in this way in the future. It is no small risk and hence community protection is important in this case. Indeed, it is the principal purpose of sentencing in relation to Charge 2.

81I have to pay regard to the impact of the crimes as well as the maximum penalty.

Prison last resort

82A court must never impose a sentence more severe than that which is required to achieve the purposes of sentencing. That is a fundamental proposition. Prison is still in this State, a disposition of last resort.  Your counsel was not suggesting that prison could be avoided. She conceded prison was warranted here. Rather, she was submitting that a sentence could be structured such that there could be a prison component equating to your existing pre-sentence detention, combined with your immediate release onto a very strict CCO, with all the limitations spoken of in the Code Black report somehow drawn into such an order. If I was of the view that such an outcome could achieve the various purposes of sentencing, I would be duty bound to proceed in a such a fashion, for as I have just said, a court must never impose a more severe sentence than is required to achieve the purposes of sentencing. The same would apply if I thought that a longer period in prison with release ultimately onto a CCO was able to achieve the purposes of sentencing. That was not being urged upon me by your counsel, by the way. Her secondary position was a head sentence and a non-parole period. That may have just been the way the plea evolved and it is possible she overlooked that possibility, though I doubt it, as it is my experience of Ms Strugnell that she tends not to overlook much. For completeness I have considered the option of a combination term with further time in prison and release at a later time onto a strict CCO. I do not believe that either combination type option is open to me in the sound exercise of my sentencing discretion in this case.  

83I do not doubt for one moment that there will be a great need for structure and support to try to reduce and manage your risk when you ultimately come to be released back into the community. That is surely obvious. The Code Black proposed arrangements might be the sort of thing to be utilised by the Adult Parole Board. I do not know one way or the other. I can make no assumptions about that or even about whether you will be released on parole.  However, the Adult Parole Board have a much swifter power to haul you back into custody in the event of non-compliance with any condition of parole. It is a far more leisurely process when there is a breach of a CCO instituted in this Court, even one where Judicial monitoring is engaged. 

84When I reflect of the level of risk involved, I do not believe it is open or appropriate for me to sentence you in such a fashion. I am being asked to virtually construct a protective cocoon around your person, guarding against any instance of your being left alone in the community, or even in your unit. It is virtually a request to use a CCO as a de facto NCSO. Had you run the defence of mental impairment and succeeded in that defence, and that is by no means a certainty, you would have likely been placed onto some form of supervision order with a notional length of 7 and a half years, but running essentially indefinitely and with all sorts or conditions attached to the order.  That would not have involved any aspect of sentencing by a Court. It would not have been a sentence. It would have been an order made under that specialist legislation consequent on a finding of mental impairment. Well, you have elected not to run that defence. I am not dealing with you under that Crimes (Mental Impairment and Unfitness to be Tried) Act. I am sentencing you for your crimes.

85To achieve what your counsel urged upon me, I would either attach condition after condition on a CCO, very much in the fashion of the most onerous style of bail conditions which could be contemplated, which I do not regard as appropriate for a CCO, or I would employ a general condition attached to the CCO to somehow delegate powers and discretions to Code Black via Corrections, which I do not regard as appropriate either. Code Black would not be supervising the order. Corrections would be.

86The Sentencing Act sets out the sorts of conditions available on a CCO. I do accept that there is a pretty broad power residing there.  There would be conditions requiring abstinence from alcohol and drugs and testing for such substances. They do not present any particular issue.

87But I would be fixing a curfew, as well as explicit impediments to you even leaving the unit at any stage outside that curfew, other than when under the care, control and direct line of sight supervision of one of the staff at the unit. They are just some of the many conditions which would be required.

88My view is that it is not open to me in the sound exercise of my discretion to deal with you in this way. I do not believe it is a sensible or realistic CCO for me to impose. As importantly, such an outcome would not pay adequate weight to the need to punish you, and more significantly to protect the community from you.  

89What I will do is pass individual sentences, mark out some measure of cumulation and fix a non-parole period.

90I take into account the principle of totality of sentence. I have to consider whether the effect of the sentence is just and appropriate and commensurate with your overall criminality. The presumption of concurrency is removed here. You fall to be sentenced as a serious arson offender in relation to Charge 2. That offence on its own is a separate, serious enough crime. I have taken a last look at the effect of my order for cumulation to ensure the overall effect of these sentences is not crushing, and is consistent with your overall criminality. There must be some cumulation and that would be so irrespective of the serious offender provisions.  I am, after all, dealing with two quite separate, serious enough criminal acts occurring on different dates and at different places.  There is obviously a link in that each crime was no doubt driven by your poor mental state in this period of your life. I do not ignore that fact. I believe Charge 1 is the most serious matter and so the sentence imposed on that charge will be marked out as the base sentence.

91As to the fixing of a non-parole period, given the dimensions of my head sentence, I am required as a matter of law to fix a non-parole period. I can make no assumptions at all as to whether or not you will be released on parole.  In fact I must not speculate about that. The Adult Parole Board will assess your risk and suitability for parole. Whether you are released on parole will be a matter entirely in the hands of the Adult Parole Board. I will however provide my reasons as well as the Code Black and Dr Darjee reports to the Adult Parole Board. They may be of some assistance to them and to you.

92Mr Goldstraw, stand up please.

Sentence

93On Charge 1, arson I convict and sentence you to 2 years 3 months' imprisonment.

94On Charge 2, for which you fall to be sentenced as a serious arson offender. I convict and sentence you to 16 months' imprisonment.

Section 6E Direction as to extent of concurrency

95I direct that 11 months of the sentence imposed on Charge 2 will be served concurrently with the sentence imposed on Charge 1 and so this order produces 5 months' cumulation.  

Total Effective Sentence

96These orders therefore result in a total effective sentence of 2 years and 8 months or 32 months' imprisonment.

Non-Parole Period

97I fix a period of 16 months during which you will not be eligible for release on parole.

Section 18 Pre-Sentence Detention

98You have already served 344 days of this sentence by way of pre-sentence detention. I am required to enter that fact into the records of the court pursuant to s18 of the Sentencing Act.

Serious Offender Status

99I have sentenced you as a serious arson offender in relation to Charge 2 and that fact is also to be entered into the Court record.

6AAA

100I have told you that I have taken into account your guilty plea. If you had pleaded not guilty and been found guilty of these offences after a trial, I would have sentenced you to 4 and a half years’ imprisonment and fixed a non-parole period of 2 years and 3 months.

101Have a seat please. 

102

Are there any other matters, from your perspective at all, Ms Liantzakis, or

Ms Strugnell?

103MS LIANTZAKIS:  No, Your Honour.

104MS STRUGNELL:  No, Your Honour.

105HIS HONOUR:  You each follow the sentence.  I am required to spell out the extent of concurrency rather than the extent of cumulation, because I was dealing with him as a serious arson offender, so it is a two year, three month, base sentence.  It is the 16 months imposed on the second charge with 11 of that running concurrently, hence five in addition, so two years, eight months, with a non-parole period of 16 months.

106

He is not that far removed from parole eligibility dates, so he will need to take whatever steps need to be taken to at least apply for consideration of parole. 

Ms Strugnell, will you go down and see your client downstairs, or will you have some other conference at a later stage?

107

MS STRUGNELL:  No, Your Honour, we will go downstairs and speak to

Mr Goldstraw.

108HIS HONOUR:  That completes the matter, thank you. Mr Goldstraw can be removed.

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