A MEETING of the Orana Law Society (OLS) Tuesday night will discuss referring Dubbo Mayor Mathew Dickerson to the Attorney General to be prosecuted for contempt.
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It follows what the OLS has described as “unprecedented attacks” by the mayor on Dubbo magistrate Andrew Eckhold.
Earlier, Cr Dickerson called for “cold, hard data” on the sentencing regime in Dubbo and greater accountability from magistrates in response to a growing belief sentencing of the city’s criminals was too lenient.
“What seems to be occurring is a lenient sentencing regime is giving criminals confidence to commit crimes knowing it’s unlikely there will be consequences for their actions,” Cr Dickerson said.
“I’m going on information suggesting lenient sentencing is the root of that but let’s have the data and have a debate.
“What I’ve been asking for all along is data to see whether the lenient sentencing we think is occurring actually is.
“Why aren’t we allowed to have good data on sentencing regimes of the magistrate? Surely the community deserves that?”
Cr Dickerson said he had compared NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research figures from 2010 with those from 2013 and seen a marked increase in the reporting of some crimes.
“In Dubbo, steal from a retail store went up from 193 to 347 incidents, an 80 per cent increase, steal from motor vehicle went from 450 to 632, motor vehicle theft from 146 to 185 and fraud from 147 to 199, a 35 per cent increase.”
OLS secretary Peter Bartley said the mayor had “gone out on a limb with his ill-considered attack on Mr Eckhold,” and had “isolated himself from the majority of rational thinking citizens of Dubbo.”
“The mayor has wrongly linked crime rates in Dubbo to allegedly lenient sentences handed down by Mr Eckhold,” Mr Bartley said.
“The mayor has failed to consult the legal profession before embarking on this wrong-headed attack.”
But Cr Dickerson said he was “without a doubt representing the majority of the people of Dubbo”, and described the OLS actions in calling the meeting as “intimidation of the mayor of the city”.
“It questions the mayor’s freedom of speech when they start trying to intimidate the duly-elected Mayor of the city,” Cr Dickerson said.
“A mayor needs to be able to express the views of the community. Who wants a mayor that says, ‘no comment’?”
Mr Bartley said the mayor failed to understand the purposes of sentencing that required magistrates to consider a range of factors.
“The purposes of sentencing include adequate punishment of offenders, protection of the community, the rehabilitation of offenders, making the offender accountable, denouncing the offender’s conduct, recognising the harm done to the victim and deterring the offender and other persons from committing similar offences,” he said.
Cr Dickerson said protecting the community from the offender was incredibly important, deterring the offender and others was good and ensuring the offender was adequately punished for the offence would deter future offences.
OLS secretary Peter Bartley said the mayor had “gone out on a limb with his ill-considered attack on Mr Eckhold,” and had “isolated himself from the majority of rational thinking citizens of Dubbo.”
“But there seems to be so much emphasis on promoting the rehabilitation of the offender that the other six (purposes of sentencing), including making the offender accountable for his or her actions and recognising the harm done to the victim of crime and the community seem to have been forgotten,” Cr Dickerson said.
Mr Bartley said the meeting would take place at the offices of Austen Brown Boog solicitors from 5.30pm.
“Scurrilous criticism of the court may amount to contempt by having a real tendency to undermine public confidence in the administration of justice,” Mr Bartley said.
Another matter to be considered, he said, was whether Cr Dickerson had breached the local government code of conduct “by bringing council into disrepute with his obtuse criticism of the local judiciary”.
Cr Dickerson said he was “intrigued” to discover the meeting had been arranged.
“I’m not a member of the OLS, so I’m not invited,” he said.
“I spent eight years on council with Peter. He knows my number and my email address. If he is that outraged by my actions, why hasn’t he bothered to contact me and tell me so, instead of putting out a media release to say the OLS is having a meeting to discuss me?
“As to any suggestion I’m grandstanding, the Orana Law Society put out a media release last month commenting on sentencing themselves, saying courts in the region were not lenient. They started this debate before I did.”
