“The VMIA is a statutory authority which provides insurance for state assets and risk management services to state departments and agencies,” Mr Clark said.

“With over 30 years’ experience and a broad range of involvement across the medical profession, Mr McNeil will bring vital skills and knowledge to the Board.”

Mr Clark said Mr McNeil’s knowledge in this field, as well as his significant board experience, will assist the Board as the VMIA insures risks such as medical indemnity claims against public hospitals and their employees.

The VMIA Public Healthcare Program also provides a range of general insurances to Victoria’s public health system, including a variety of eligible healthcare agencies.

Mr Clark said Mr McNeil had a number of board memberships, including membership on the International Society of Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy, the Austin Hospital Board, and the Australia and New Zealand Intensive Care Society – Research Centre.

“Mr McNeil’s current role as the Head of the School of Applied Clinical and Public Health Sciences at Monash University, Alfred Hospital adds to his strong medical experience,” Mr Clark said.

“I look forward to Mr McNeil’s contribution to the VMIA throughout the term of his appointment.”

Mr Clark said Mr Cooper, a Crown Prosecutor with 32 years’ legal experience, would be a valuable addition to the court.

“Mr Cooper was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1980 and became a member of the Victorian Bar the same year,” Mr Clark said.

“In 1990 Mr Cooper was appointed a Prosecutor for the Queen and then became a Crown Prosecutor appearing in all criminal jurisdictions in Victoria.”

The Federal Government appointed Mr Cooper as Crown Prosecutor in the Solomon Islands in 2003 as part of the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands.

“Mr Cooper has established a long and distinguished career with extensive experience in many areas of law. His appointment as a Crown Prosecutor and now a Magistrate is testament to his hard work and dedication,” Mr Clark said.

“Mr Cooper will be a significant asset to the Magistrates’ Court and I am pleased to announce his appointment to the bench today.”

Mr Clark said all three appointees had demonstrated significant professional achievement in their legal careers and would bring considerable experience to their positions.

Michael Macnamara practised as a solicitor for 17 years prior to serving as the Deputy President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Victoria and the Acting Chairman of the Credit Tribunal of Victoria.

Mr Macnamara has since held the position of Deputy President of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) for the past 14 years.

Mr Macnamara will be joined at the County Court by Bill Stuart SC, who has practised law for 34 years and was recently appointed as a Senior Counsel. Mr Stuart has also served on the executive of the Criminal Bar Association.

After joining the Victorian Bar, Mr Stuart appeared in close to 300 trials, predominantly for the defence. This was followed by his appointment in 1998 as in-house counsel for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, where he specialised in fraud and drug cases, before returning to the Bar.

Acting Judge Barbara Cotterell served for 18 years as a Magistrate before being appointed an acting judge of the County Court in 2008.

Mr Clark said Ms Cotterell joined the Victorian Bar in 1973 and was a highly regarded barrister whose experience in a wide range of cases made her a valuable addition to the bench.

“Acting Judge Cotterell’s appointment as a tenured judge of the Court brings a welcome end to the disgraceful attempt by the previous government to introduce appointments of judges on a short term basis dependent on executive government and which undermined judicial independence,” Mr Clark said.

Justice Osborn will fill the place recently vacated by the retirement of Justice David Ashley.

Mr Clark said Justice Osborn was a highly regarded figure in the Victorian legal community, bringing many years of experience to the position.

“Justice Osborn joined the Victorian Bar in 1975, with a general practice particularly focused on public law cases,” Mr Clark said.

“In addition to his extensive experience at the Bar, Justice Osborn taught town planning law at the University of Melbourne for 20 years.

“His abilities and contribution to the law were recognised in 1994, when he was appointed Queen’s Counsel, and again in 2002 when he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Victoria.”

In 2009, Justice Osborn became the principal judge in the Common Law Division of the Supreme Court, presiding over a number of substantial trials in addition to periodic appearances on the Court of Appeal.

“I congratulate Justice Osborn on his appointment to the Court of Appeal, and look forward to his ongoing contribution to the people of Victoria and the state’s judicial system,” Mr Clark said.

“The Victorian Coalition Government committed in opposition to expand the membership of the Sentencing Advisory Council board to include a member from a victim-run support or advocacy group, and a member who is a police officer actively engaged in law enforcement duties,” Mr Clark said.

“I’m very pleased that Kornelia Zimmer and Peter Dikschei have agreed to serve in these newly created positions.

“They will bring new and valuable perspectives to issues of crime and sentencing, adding to the range of backgrounds and experience of existing SAC members.”

Following the tragic death of her brother Mark in 2008, Kornelia Zimmer has become increasingly involved in work with a variety of victims of crime.

Ms Zimmer is currently Vice-President of Support After Murder and a policy and research officer at the Coalition for Safer Communities, both of which are voluntary positions.

Sergeant Peter Dikschei, who joined Victoria Police in 1983, is an operational police member with a broad policing background. He is currently a supervisor at the Police Communications Centre, where he oversees the management and delivery of police resources to all manner of emergencies.

Sergeant Dikschei also provides immediate command and control functions at crime scenes and critical incidents until field command is established.

“The SAC provides a range of valuable advice to government on sentencing practices in Victoria. The addition of positions dedicated to victims of crime and operational police will greatly assist the work of the SAC,” Mr Clark said.

Legislation amending the Sentencing Act to create these two new positions was passed by Parliament earlier this year. Ms Zimmer and Sergeant Dikschei will take up their positions from 1 January 2012.

I am sure you are as interested as I am in Bernard Salt’s answer to the question posed for today’s Oration – “How will demographic change shape our community, and what have rights got to do with it?”

It is a truism that time brings many changes. Over time, not only demography changes, but our perceptions about rights as well.

Yet, just as demographic change comes both with cycles and with underlying long term trends, so too our perceptions about rights.

There have been many ebbs and flows over the centuries about how we characterise the nature and origins of rights, but there has been one constant that has stood the test of time, and that is the fundamental human drive for justice and fairness.

It is a drive that is grounded in empathy and compassion, it is grounded in reason, and it is grounded in the needs of any organised community. Perhaps most fundamentally, it is grounded in the equal and inherent dignity of every member of the human family.

Even just a quick look at human history shows how fervently our ancestors believed in, fought for and indeed died for the very principles that we celebrate today.

One can see the quest for justice and fairness in the 18th century BC Code of Hammurabi – the earliest recorded legal code, which of course is still on display to the world, in the Louvre Museum in Paris – which sets out Hammurabi’s rules as to how members of his society could live and work cooperatively together.

One can see the same quest in the Biblical appeals on behalf of widows and orphans and in Plato’s account of the injustice of the trial of Socrates.

One can see it in the Magna Carta, when King John’s barons together successfully established limits on the monarch’s powers, not only for their own benefit, but also for the benefit of the King’s subjects generally.

One can see it in the development of courts of equity in England, which strove to deliver fairness as well as justice.

One can see it in the Bill of Rights in 1689, which entrenched the principle that the monarch cannot abrogate the law.

One can see it in the calls of William Wilberforce and others to bring an end to slavery in the early 19th century.

And in the 20th century, one can see the quest for justice and fairness in the Nuremberg trials, where the world insisted on accountability for the perpetrators of horrific injustice – an insistence that continues at the International Criminal Court today.

Going back two centuries, when Sir William Blackstone in 1753 presented the first known lectures on English law ever delivered at an English university, he grounded the foundations of common law in natural law, in principles said to derive from the inherent nature of human beings.

However, the natural law groundings of Blackstone subsequently came under question from the legal positivism and utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and others in the 19th century.

As a result, the philosophical grounding of rights in common law became far less clear, and has been the subject of protracted debate and changing views over the intervening years.

Despite this, a strong sense of justice and fairness has remained a constant feature of the Westminster common law legal system. In Australia, it has been reinforced by the Aussie sense of a “fair go”, which has been the vital underpinning of our successful open, welcoming and multicultural society.

In the Westminster common law tradition, the sense of justice and fairness has been manifested in at least three different aspects of the law:
• in how our courts have applied the common law,
• in the terms of the legislation passed by our Parliaments, reflecting in turn the general repugnance of the community for unfair laws, and
• in the way the legislation passed by Parliaments has been interpreted in the courts.

In combination, these factors have operated over many years to strengthen and reinforce justice and fairness, notwithstanding changing fashions about the philosophical underpinnings of law and of rights.

Among the vital common law principles that we can tend to take for granted are the principles of natural justice – that decision-makers should be free from bias, and should obey the maxim to audi alteram partem; in other words, to listen to the other side of the argument before reaching a final decision.

Other long established principles include the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, the right not to be falsely imprisoned and the right to compensation for the alienation of property.

Common law and statute have also combined to secure the rule of law – that every member of the community is subject to the law and can brought to account for breaches of the law and, most importantly, that rulers as well as the ruled are subject to the law.

We who are fortunate to live in Victoria today are the beneficiaries of the centuries of efforts of those who have fought to establish and protect the principles that make Victoria the open, free and democratic society that it is.

However, we don’t live in a state of perfection of the law, or perfection of human behaviour. We therefore still face the continuing challenge of identifying those areas in need of improvement in the law and in our institutions, and improvement in the way rights are observed and upheld in practice.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence in Australia and Victoria of public discussion and debate about rights. For the reasons I have outlined, there is not much contention about the desirability of rights in abstract. It’s very rare to find any lawyer, legislator or citizen who would intentionally to set out to attack the existence of rights. It is never as simple as a contest between “rights” and “anti-rights”.

Rather, as lawyers, legislators or citizens, the challenges that we deal with regarding questions of rights involve policy debates and judgements about how to characterise rights and responsibilities and about the appropriate relationships between various rights and responsibilities.

As well as an innate sense of justice and fairness, there has also been a second invaluable constant of the Westminster common law tradition, namely a very practical, results oriented attitude. Does a law or institution actually work? What difference does it make in practice? Theory and philosophy are important, but the empiricist approach that characterises the common law and most Westminster Parliaments seeks to test theory and philosophy against practical consequences and to judge laws and institutions by what they actually achieve.

Today’s Oration is squarely in that tradition. The topic it addresses is not simply about rights in abstract, but about the reality of life in Melbourne and Victoria today, and about how demography might shape lives in future.

I expect it will give us cause for thought not only about rights, but about other key challenges for economic and social policy that we face.

I thank you for the opportunity to set the scene for today’s Oration and, like you, I look forward to hearing what our guest of honour is about to tell us.

“We recognised this problem, committed to fixing it and moved swiftly to ensure that this anomaly is dealt with ahead of the Christmas holiday period,” Mr Clark said.

“To allow people to sit behind the wheel and drink while driving undermines the message that drinking and driving don’t mix, and undermines the good work of the TAC and many others to get that message through to motorists, particularly young motorists.”

The legislation introduced today will amend the Road Safety Act to introduce two new offences that prohibit the consumption of intoxicating liquor by a person driving a motor vehicle or accompanying a learner driver.

Victoria Police will be able to enforce these offences by traffic infringement notice, which will carry a penalty of two penalty units. The maximum penalty for each offence will be 10 penalty units.

“If the legislation is passed by Parliament this week, it can be on the statute books before Christmas, helping to save lives and reduce trauma on our roads during the festive season,” Mr Clark said.

Mr Clark said the funding would be directed towards the development and updating of legal information to be included in the Law Handbook Online.

“This initiative means the Law Handbook Online will continue to provide Victorians with trusted free legal information,” Mr Clark said.

“The Law Handbook Online gives legal information in plain English, particularly to help Victorians with no legal background who are faced with a legal issue.

“This online resource is a great way for people to obtain the information they need to help solve legal problems, while also reducing the burden on legal assistance services,” Mr Clark said.

The Law Handbook Online is produced by the Fitzroy Legal Service.

In 2008 an online version of the Fitzroy Legal Service’s longstanding and highly regarded handbook was developed, with funding provided by the Legal Services Board. This has greatly increased the handbook’s accessibility and readership.

“This funding injection provided by the Victorian Government will help the Law Handbook Online to continue until 30 June 2012, so that other revenue and service delivery options can be explored,” Mr Clark said.

The Online Handbook currently records 10,000 visits every week from Victorian individuals and families seeking free legal information.

The Law Handbook Online can be accessed at www.lawhandbook.org.au

Attorney-General Robert Clark said the Sentencing Survey received a strong response from Victorians who welcomed the opportunity to have their say on sentencing.

“The MyViews Sentencing Survey is another example of the Victorian Coalition Government fulfilling our commitment to seeking the views of Victorians about key issues affecting the community,” Mr Clark said.

“The high level of response to the survey confirms the importance Victorians place on the just and effective operation of our criminal justice system and on the consequences that follow from criminal behaviour.

The survey was available online through the MyViews website from 27 July to 26 August this year, as well as through Department of Justice service centres and various media outlets that supported the survey.

Respondents were asked to hand down a sentence in 17 hypothetical criminal scenarios. Respondents were then asked to indicate how a number of possible aggravating or mitigating factors would tend to increase or decrease the sentences they would impose.

The scenarios that attracted the highest average sentence levels were scenarios involving murder (life imprisonment), large-scale commercial drug trafficking (21-25 years imprisonment) and arson causing death (21-25 years imprisonment).

The scenarios that attracted the lowest average sentence levels were those involving sex with a 16 year old by an offender aged 18 (Community Correction Order), threats to kill (1-2 years imprisonment) and recklessly causing serious injury (1-2 years imprisonment).

The survey results showed that respondents were most likely to increase their sentences if the crime severely affected victims or if the crime was premeditated or involved a continuing attack against an incapacitated victim.

Respondents were most likely to reduce sentences if the offender did not have a criminal record, pleaded guilty straight away, helped police to arrest co-offenders, expressed genuine remorse or had completed a rehabilitation program.

Mr Clark thanked participants for the time and thought they had given to completing the survey, and said the results had provided valuable feedback to the government and would help shape future government reforms.

“It was good to see there was a diverse range of people responding to the survey,” Mr Clark said.

“Most people who completed the survey (53.3 per cent) said they had not had any direct interaction with the justice system, 9.6 per cent identified themselves as jurors, 9.5 per cent as victims of crime, 5 per cent as members of the legal profession and 3.3 per cent as offenders.

“Of survey respondents, 54.2 per cent identified themselves as being male and 41.6 per cent as being female.

“”The Government has already committed to and commenced the introductions of a range of

sentencing reforms, including baseline sentences, statutory minimum sentences for gross violence offences and the abolition of suspended sentences.

“The results also highlight the community’s concern about offences such as large scale commercial drug trafficking and culpable driving, which can have devastating consequences, particularly for the lives of young people and their families,” Mr Clark said.

The full results of the MyViews Sentencing Survey can be accessed online at www.myviews.justice.vic.gov.au

Mr Clark said Mr Ginnane was a respected barrister who has practised in both civil and criminal law.

“His extensive advocacy experience in the areas of commercial, insolvency and administrative and employment law makes Mr Ginnane a valuable addition to the Magistrates’ Court,” Mr Clark said.

“Mr. Ginnane’s 21 years at the Bar has seen him appear before a range of State and Commonwealth courts and tribunals.

“He has participated as an instructor with the Bar Readers Course and as an instructor in intensive criminal and civil advocacy training for lawyers in Papua New Guinea.”

Mr. Ginnane was an inaugural and past Committee Member of the Industrial Bar Association and past member of the Australian Labour Law Association.

“His dedication and legal experience will ensure the Magistrates’ Court and the Victorian public will be well served by Mr Ginnane’s appointment,” Mr Clark said.

“I look forward to his contribution to the court and the Victorian judicial system and congratulate him on his new position.”