GEORGE WILLIAM CORNELIUS 20 OCTOBER 2026
In the matter of s 27(1) of the Sentencing Act 1997 SLATTERY AJ
By application, dated 6 August 2026, the Director of Public Prosecutions for Tasmania made application pursuant to s 27(1) of the Sentencing Act 1997 that an order suspending a sentence of two years’ imprisonment made against you, George William Cornelius, on 18 March 2025 be reviewed on the ground that you have breached the condition of the order suspending the sentence by committing the offences of breach of restraint order on 21 March 2025, burglary, stealing and computer related fraud on 27 July 2025 and two counts of breach of bail and a breach of restraint order on 30 July 2025.
On 18 March 2025, a Justice of the Supreme Court sentenced you on complaints 10072 of 2023, 1186 of 2023 and 10073 of 2024 to two years’ imprisonment, backdated to commence on 22 January 2025 with the balance of that sentence suspended on the condition that you do not commit another offence punishable by imprisonment during the operational period of the order. The balance of the term of imprisonment was 675 days.
During the period that you were bound by this suspended sentence, you committed, and have pleaded guilty to the following further offences: complaint 2955 of 2025, a breach of restraint order dated 21 March 2025; complaint 9056 of 2025, the count of burglary, stealing and computer related fraud on 27 July 2025; and on complaint 9057 of 2025 two counts of breach of bail and a count of a breach of a restraint order on 30 July 2025.
On 20 August 2026, you appeared before the Magistrates Court in Hobart for sentencing in relation to the new offending to which you had pleaded guilty. The learned sentencing magistrate activated a total of five suspended sentences that had been imposed upon you in that court. The magistrate activated two suspended sentences of three months each, which were to be served concurrently, as well as activating suspended sentences that were to be served cumulatively, namely another sentence of three months’ imprisonment, a sentence of two months’ imprisonment and a sentence of six months’ imprisonment. The learned magistrate additionally imposed a custodial sentence of seven months’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of three months and two weeks to be served cumulatively with the activated sentences. The effect of these sentences was a total term of imprisonment of 21 months, backdated to 31 July 2025, the date you went into custody, with you becoming eligible for parole after serving half of the 21 months, which means that you became eligible for parole in around June of this year.
The offending that is in breach of your suspended sentence in this Court is the offending on complaint numbers 2955/2025, 9056/2025 and 9057/2025 for which the learned sentencing magistrate imposed a sentence of seven months’ imprisonment, with a non-parole period of three months and two weeks. This sentence also covered offending on complaint numbers 1492/2024 and 9263/2025, but these were not in breach of your suspended sentence and are therefore not relevant.
The question with which I deal in this sentence, is whether or not to review the suspended sentence of 18 March 2025.
Section 27 of the Sentencing Act 1997 governs this application. Under s 27(4B) of the Act, if I am satisfied that you had been found guilty of a new offence, I must activate the sentence of imprisonment and order that you serve that sentence. If, under s 27(4C), I consider that the making of an order under s 27(4B) would be unjust, I may instead make any order as prescribed under that sub-section.
I am informed that you have entered guilty pleas in respect of all of the offending in breach of the suspended sentence of 18 March 2025. Therefore, for s 27(4B) I am satisfied that you are guilty of this new offending and the obligation falls upon me under that subsection, as well as the discretion available to me under s 27(4C).
In order to explain the exercise of my discretion, it is necessary to briefly summarise the offending to which Estcourt J dealt with you on 18 March 2025, as well as some detail in relation to your further offending.
On 18 March 2025, Estcourt J sentenced you on your plea of guilty on the offences of burglary and stealing and, under s 385A of the Criminal Code, his Honour dealt with a number of summary offences of motor vehicle stealing, threatening police officers, trespass, breach of bail and burglary and stealing, one count of resisting a police officer, and resisting a person assisting police.
His Honour accepted the nexus between your offending and your substance abuse, reflected in a presentence report which his Honour accepted. His Honour said that you had commenced methamphetamine use at aged 17. There had been periods of abstinence, but you had relapsed. You had been admitted to hospital on a number of occasions following overdoses of liquid buprenorphine and alcohol intoxication, and recently for drug induced psychosis. His Honour then took into account the positive aspects of the presentence report, particularly your attempts at sobriety and remaining drug free on remand. You gave to his Honour a positive indication of rehabilitation, which his Honour accepted as part of the sentencing process.
On complaint 2995 of 2025, you were alleged to have been in breach of a restraint order. You pleaded guilty. Under the restraint order, you were required not to go within 300 metres of the boundary of premises of [address redacted], a neighbour of your parents. You had previously broken into a shed at this address owned by two police officers. You were sleeping at your parents’ home and therefore you were in breach of the restraint order. On complaint 9056 of 2025, dated 11 July 2025, you were charged with a breach of s 244 of the Criminal Code in that you entered a Honda Civic motor vehicle with the intent to commit the crime of stealing all of its contents. The third charge related to the use of a bankcard belonging to the owner of that vehicle.
On file 9057 of 2025, you were charged with and pleaded guilty to a breach of bail and a breach of restraint order on 30 July 2025. The police were called to your parents’ address on a request from your father, that you were at that address and were causing a disturbance. You were found hiding in the back yard of another property. The prosecution asserts, as is the fact that because of your behaviour, you were no longer welcome at your parents’ address or at an address called “Safe Space” at 47 Davey Street, Hobart.
In attending at your parents’ premises, you were again in breach of the same restraint order in being within 300 metres of the neighbour’s property. On this occasion your neighbour was unaware of your presence.
I am satisfied that the offending for which you received the suspended sentence from Estcourt J, occurred in breach of four other suspended sentences that were imposed in March 2023. They were not activated and, as submitted by the prosecution, his Honour took a therapeutic approach to sentencing, accepting as he did the nexus between your offending and your substance abuse.
The new offending breaches the suspended sentence imposed by his Honour. The most significant offending is in relation to burglary, stealing and the fraud charge.
You now have been in custody since 31 July 2025.
In submissions, I was informed that, notwithstanding the difficulties that occurred in 2025, your family remains supportive of you. I was informed that your father is prepared for you now to live on the rural property owned by your parents, that he will supervise you to an extent and that you are expected to live there in that rural environment, away from the drug connections that you have in Hobart. I have some grave misgivings about the suggestion that a rural environment may remove you from the availability of drugs. I would not accept that submission.
The Court heard evidence from your psychologist, Dr Wright who prepared a report of 12 July 2025. She informed me that she had been working with you for two years and that a significant difficulty for you is the number of head injuries that you have sustained. You have had head injuries from a fall whilst intoxicated and under the influence of drugs, you have been struck a number of times in custody, you have struck your head on a number of metal objects and these events have had a significant effect upon your mental capacity. This effect is exacerbated by your drug use. Dr Wright explained that throughout a long process of education, you have been helped to understand that you must employ strategies to be able remember things, to recognise when you are agitated or angry, to manage feelings and to undertake rehabilitative work. You are more aware of your behaviours and more easily can keep things under control. You have developed insight into your situation and the need to take responsibility. You have a plan to avoid problems, which you now understand are problems. You require stable accommodation and then to follow through with drug and alcohol counselling. You will need to go back to the Repat Hospital to continue with rehabilitative assistance, and you will need to reinstate a relationship with your family which is very supportive. Part of your education has been that if you feel the need to use drugs, you must immediately contact your family and attend drug and alcohol counselling.
Another part of your plan is that you live on the family property, which is accommodation which is not ideal, but you will have the support of your parents and the assistance of living in a remote place.
Dr Wright said that you have what is called a disabled executive function. She described this as disordered executive functioning which is not a stand-alone diagnosis but can become part of other diagnoses. Disordered executive functioning impacts on your ability to think about the consequences of your action, to manage feelings and not behave in an impulsive way having regard to those feelings. This is because it takes you some time to process what is occurring around you, what is being said to you, and what you should do. You have medicated on drugs and have been living on the streets because of your inability to operate properly with your executive functioning. You do not have an intellectual disability, and you are a person who can understand when given proper instructions in light of your brain injuries. You have an understanding that if you use drugs, your position is significantly worsened and now you will become psychotic. I am told that you will receive some supervised support from your father on the property and you retain the emotional and parental support from your mother. Dr Wright said that both of those matters are crucial for you.
In that background, I turn to this application for review. There are a number of difficulties. I was given to understand during submissions that your methamphetamine use commenced after you had commenced employment and that your excessive use of that drug led to the loss of your employment with Tas Forest. You were about 23 years of age, you had a relationship which produced two children, but which was riven with drug and alcohol abuse. You informed Estcourt J that your drug use commenced when you were 17 years of age at about the end of your education. You enjoyed an upbringing in a stable household, with four siblings, you were educated to a high level, you achieved year 12 status, your father worked in the fishing industry and your mother managed the family business through her accounting skills. I gained the clear impression that you have been given every opportunity in life, and that you have made decisions which have had a tragically devasting effect upon your whole life and your relationships.
At least in 2025, you lost the support of your parents because of your continued failure to observe the terms of your bail agreements, restraint orders and the decisions you made in your life to continue to consume drugs. You have committed these offences without any consideration for the orders imposed upon you in relation to bail, the restraints to protect others from your activities, and the sentences imposed upon you in respect of previous offences. You have invaded the privacy of innocent individuals, stolen their property and hoarded it in an attempt obtain an advantage for yourself to be in a position to purchase further drugs, which merely compounds the difficulties that you have created for yourself.
These are all self-inflicted effects that you have created for yourself and the causes of your offending. Compounding these self-inflicted effects is that you have suffered head injuries on a number of occasions, which have had an extraordinarily deleterious effect upon you. Dr Wright opines that you are significantly affected by these injuries, and you will require ongoing care and assistance to establish a stable existence. These were the sentiments you expressed to Estcourt J in 2025. His Honour gave you the benefit of the apparent genuineness of your intention to address and overcome your difficulties with the assistance of the services made available to you but in respect of which, you have not taken full use or advantage. That is demonstrated by your further descent into the effects of consumption of drugs including, according to Dr Wright, the real prospect that you will develop a psychosis.
I am required to have clearly in mind, the operation of s 27(4B) and (4C). In my determination, I accept that Estcourt J considered both specific and general deterrence and I accept the evidence of Dr Wright that, at some stages of your life, you have had insight into your offending which is directly connected to your methamphetamine use which has, in part, led to the exacerbation of your psychotic condition, the potential for you now to develop a psychosis, and so your offending. I accept the evidence of Dr Wright and so the prospect of your psychosis, is objectively apparent. It is necessary for the decision I make to reflect the apparent risk of your behaviours to the general public.
You have now been in custody since 31 July 2025. On any view, that is a long period in custody and is the longest period during which you have been incarcerated. Dr Wright spoke of the effect upon you of this incarceration. I have accepted her evidence that following the considerable assistance given to you during this time, you have obtained awareness of your deficiencies in decision making due to your executive functioning problems caused by your brain injuries. I am satisfied that in the process of sentencing, a critical juncture has been reached where you remaining in prison does not achieve any appropriate sentencing purpose. In making my decision here, I consider that in light of the time that you have spent in custody, your age, the assistance your family is willing to provide to you, the assistance you will separately receive from support services, the optimum sentencing result is achieved by making no order on the suspended sentence as provided for in s 27(4C)(d). I find it would, therefore, be unjust to require you to serve all or part of your suspended sentence under s 27(4)(b).
In your short life, you have made many terrible decisions that have so adversely affected so many people, commencing with your own family and spreading to the broader community, many of whose lives you have detrimentally affected. You are the father of two children, but you seem never to have had the courage and the character to accept the responsibilities of fatherhood. An extraordinary feature of your position is that the greatest penalty you suffer is the one that you have imposed upon yourself. If you descend again into the maelstrom of drug consumption, you will be blighted by a psychosis for the balance of what is likely to be a very short life.
The formal order is that pursuant to s 27(4C) (d) of the Sentencing Act I make no order in respect of the suspended sentence imposed by Estcourt J on 18 March 2025.