STATE OF TASMANIA v MATTHEW WILLIAM ETHERTON 7 MAY 2024
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE JAGO J
Mr Etherton, on 18 May 2022 I sentenced you to a Community Correction Order for offences contrary to the Firearms Act and a number of other miscellaneous summary offences, relevant to your possession of some gel blaster firearms. The Community Correction Order had an operational period of two years. Amongst its conditions, the Community Correction Order required you to complete 90 hours of community service and not commit any offence punishable by imprisonment. It also contained a special condition requiring you to complete the EQUIPS addiction programme.
You have breached the terms of the Community Correction Order in two ways. Firstly, you have committed offences that are punishable by imprisonment. It is obviously a core condition of the Community Correction Order that you not commit any offences punishable by imprisonment during the life of the Community Correction Order. You have also breached the Community Correction Order by failing to report to a probation officer as and when required. In particular, I am told that you failed to report to a probation officer on 19 occasions. Apparently 12 of those occasions related to your failure to attend at Community Service, although I do note you have now completed the full 90 hours of community service that you were required to undertake. The other seven occasions have been in respect to supervision, but from the sounds of what your counsel has outlined to me, on most occasions after your initial failure to attend, you re-engaged with community Corrections.
One of the requirements of the Community Correction Order was that you complete the EQUIPS addiction programme if directed to do so by your probation officer. That was imposed because, at the time I sentenced you in May of 2022, you had issues with illicit substances. It seems those issues with illicit substances are ongoing because the two breaching offences relate to you breaching the Road Safety (Alcohol and Drugs) Act by driving motor vehicles whilst a prescribed illicit drug was present in your oral fluid. On two occasions you drove whilst methyl amphetamine was present in your oral fluid.
I note your record of prior convictions generally, you do not have a particularly poor record of prior convictions for offences under the Road Safety (Alcohol and Drugs) Act. You do have some prior convictions for driving whilst disqualified, but not so much for driving with illicit substances in your oral fluid. The Magistrates Court dealt with the two breaches of the Road Safety (Alcohol and Drugs) Act by way of imposition of fines and disqualification.
I have determined the most appropriate course is to require you to complete the EQUIPS addiction programme because obviously your use of illicit substances is an ongoing difficulty, and it is in your interests and the community’s interest that we endeavour to address that. I am well familiar, because I hear it often in this Court, that there are currently difficulties with the EQUIPS addiction programme being able to be offered on a regular and timely basis, so I am going to extend the operation of the Community Correction Order in the hope that you will be able to avail yourself of the EQUIPS addiction programme. I accept it is not within your control as to when that programme runs and, as I say, I understand that there have been difficulties with it.
I am going to deal with this, as I am required to, pursuant to s 42AW of the Sentencing Act and I am simply going to extend the life of the Community Correction Order. It will contain all of the same conditions that were imposed when I imposed the Community Correction Order in May of last year, save, of course, you will not be required to do any further community service. You have completed that. Otherwise, the requirements that you comply with the Community Correction Order will be exactly the same. I am going to extend it for a further 12 months from today. Pursuant to s 42AW(4)(b)(iii), I extend the operational period of the Community Correction Order that was imposed by this Court on 16 May 2022 for a further period of 12 months from today’s date. I make no further order.