STATE OF TASMANIA v BRANDII BATTESE 19 OCTOBER 2026
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Brandii Battese, you plead guilty to arson. Just after 1.15 am on 13 September 2025, you set fire set fire to an armchair in the dining room of the house at Mount Stuart Drive in Newnham you had been leasing from Homes Tasmania since December 2024. Your intention was to burn down the house. In August you had asked Homes Tasmania to transfer you to another property. Just before you lit the fire you told your friend by text message what you were about to do. As soon as you had lit the fire you left and sent other texts and Facebook messages about what you had done. At 1.51 am, one of your friends called the emergency services. The Fire Service arrived very quickly, but by that time there had been extensive smoke and heat damage throughout much of the house. It was made uninhabitable. The cost of the repairs is yet to be fully assessed but is estimated to be about $200,000 which of course you have no way of repaying. You were arrested later that day but denied lighting the fire.
Arson is the most serious property crime. It is easy to commit, has capacity to cause great damage to property. The fire you lit did not really take hold, but it still caused a lot of damage. Not only that, it could have posed a serious risk to other property and persons, including neighbours and to Tasmania Fire Service officers. The house was used for public housing. It formed part of a scarce and valuable public resource and the cost of its repair or replacement will be an expense for the whole community.
For those reasons, and to make clear to you and others who may be thinking of acting in the same way what is likely to happen, actual imprisonment would generally be the appropriate sentence. In your case I have decided to what should be regarded as the unusual course of wholly suspending the term of imprisonment I am about to impose. The reason arises from your very difficult personal circumstances.
You were 23 at the time and you are now 24. You have pleaded guilty. I think you are sorry for what you did and you now understand how serious it was. Your only recent prior conviction is for disturbing the police and assaulting a police officer in April 2023 for which you were fined. You have never been to prison before. You are a young Aboriginal woman who comes from circumstances of profound disadvantage and adversity. Before you were born you were, in utero, subjected to your mother’s drug and alcohol abuse. Soon after you were born she abandoned you and you were placed into foster care. Since then, the one stable and consistent influence in your life has been your foster mother. But despite her best efforts there have been many problems. Your circumstances have been described by your counsel, in a letter from your foster mother and in a report from Dr Georgina O’Donnell. Over the years you have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, ADHD and borderline intellectual functioning. These various conditions resulted in behavioural issues as a child and the intervention of many services to attempt to address developmental delays. Your foster mother correctly encouraged ongoing contact with your family, but it did not always have a positive result. As you became older you were exposed to abuse of alcohol and drugs and your complex mental health issues are complicated even further by your own drug use, particularly methylamphetamine. I was given a report from a psychiatrist, Dr Andrew Wilson, who also suggests a diagnosis of schizophrenia, although Dr O’Donnell suspects that your psychosis may result instead from drugs. Your mother died largely as a result of her addictions when you were 15. For the most part your father has played no part in your life. Your early relationships were affected by violence. You have experienced multiple head traumas, some because of assault. All these various factors combine to result in borderline personality disorder. You have two children, but they are both being cared for by your foster mother.
Dr O’Donnell’s opinion, which I accept, is that your mental health conditions and impairments are relevant to sentence. You did not like the home in which you were living and could not cope with the position you found yourself in. You have disordered thoughts and impulsive behaviour patterns. You had disconnected the smoke alarms, but the State did not dispute that this was not to hide the fire but had happened earlier because in your disordered mind you thought there were cameras in the alarms. Your mental health conditions at the time you lit the fire meant you lacked judgment and were not thinking calmly and rationally.
Everyone will benefit if you can be supported to live as a law abiding member of the community. You need a lot of help to manage your everyday life, and you have a large NDIS package for that reason. The package includes support workers, household maintenance services and multidisciplinary therapy. Your support workers help you with shopping, attending appointments and medication compliance. You do not always properly engage with them, but that is also a symptom of your conditions. You have a new house. Were you to go to prison, it is likely that your mental health would deteriorate further, you would lose your house and your NDIS package. In the community you also have access to a great deal of support through the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and your foster parents. As part of the order I am about to make I will order supervision by a Community Corrections officer, to help make sure that you access the services and assistance which are available, and to help address your drug use. But it will ultimately be up to you to comply with the terms of the order. One of the conditions requires you to not commit an offence, which also means not using illicit drugs. That will not be easy, but what you must understand is that, although I have given you the opportunity to avoid going to prison, if you do anything else which is at all serious, you will probably not get another chance.
You are convicted on the indictment. I make a compensation order in favour of Homes Tasmania and adjourn the further terms of that order to a date to be fixed. You are sentenced to imprisonment for 15 months, wholly suspended for 18 months from today on the following conditions:
- You are not to commit another offence punishable by imprisonment during that period. If you breach that condition, you will be required to serve the term unless that is unjust.
- During the 18 month operational period of the order, commencing today, you will be subject to the supervision of a probation officer. The conditions referred to in s 24(5B) of the Sentencing Act apply to this condition and will be set out in the order you will be given. These include that you must report to a probation officer at the office of Community Corrections in Launceston within three clear working days, you must submit to supervision and comply with the directions given by your probation officer, you must not leave Tasmania without permission and you must notify of any change of address.
- In addition to the core conditions, the order will also include the following special conditions that you must, during the operational period of the order:
- attend educational and other programs, undergo assessment and treatment for alcohol and drug dependency, submit to testing for alcohol or drug use and submit to medical, psychological or psychiatric assessment or treatment as directed by a probation officer;
- attend and complete the EQUIPS addiction program as directed by a probation officer; and
- appear before the Supreme Court at Cameron Street Launceston, at 2.15 pm on Friday 19 February 2027, and at such other times as the Court may direct for review of the terms of this order. I direct the preparation of a full pre-sentence report prior to that date.