STATE OF TASMANIA v WADE ALAN MACKENZIE 23 FEBRUARY 2022
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Wade Mackenzie, you plead guilty to attempted aggravated carjacking and to stealing. At about 8.30 am on Thursday 15 April 2021 the complainant, a woman then aged 71, was in the driver seat of her car in the Brisbane Street car park looking at her phone. You saw her there as you walked past. You were with a female you were then in a relationship with. While she waited nearby you opened the front passenger door of the complainant’s car and sat inside, next to the complainant. You produced a large serrated knife, grabbed her phone and demanded she give you her car keys. She did not comply with your demand. She grabbed the keys from the dash, left the car and walked away. You took the handbag which was still in the car and left with it. It contained property and valuables worth about $3,000.
The complainant walked to a nearby business and raised the alarm. You were quickly identified from nearby CCTV and a search was begun. Your partner was arrested first. You fled, jumping over fences and hiding in yards. After about 15 minutes you were apprehended a few blocks away. You had the knife and the phone. The complainant’s handbag and its contents were found in a rubbish bin not far from her, so everything you stole was recovered. When interviewed you admitted what you had done. You told the police that you and your partner had no money and were sleeping on the street. You came up with a plan to rob someone for money for somewhere to stay, and you took the opportunity when you saw the complainant in her car. You admitted using the knife to scare her.
You are now 32. You have four children aged between 2 and 9. They are currently subject to child protection orders after having been removed from the care of their mother. You have a strong wish to have at least contact with them following your release. You have a close relationship with your mother in Queensland and your sister in Hobart is supportive of you. Prior to 2011 you had some record for dishonesty and driving offences for which short mostly suspended sentences were imposed. In 2011, in Queensland, another short suspended sentence was imposed for escape. More significantly, in Victoria in 2016 you were sentenced for intentionally causing injury to imprisonment for six months followed by a two year community based order requiring community service and supervision addressed to programs for treatment and rehabilitation for drug abuse. Following your release you returned to Tasmania. Since 2018 you have continued to commit offences including driving offences, breaches of bail, assault, dishonesty and breaches of family violence order. During that period you have been a user of methylamphetamine. You have been made subject to sentences of actual and suspended imprisonment each year since 2018. Suspended sentences, when imposed, were mostly breached and activated. The crime for which you are now to be sentenced was committed about two months after your release from prison on 22 February 2021. You were unable to live with your sister and you did not have stable accommodation. You came to Launceston with your partner. On the night before this crime you were forced to sleep in the park and were in desperate circumstances with nowhere to go.
You have been in custody since your arrest on 15 April 2021. Of the period since then, 385 days are not attributed to any other sentencing order. It is proper that I take all of that unattributed period of custody into account and, on that basis, it is agreed that the commencement date of your sentence should be 3 February 2021.
It is in your favour that you indicated an early intention to plead guilty. A plea of guilty carries particular weight when the administration of justice is delayed by the pandemic. The unfortunate delay has arisen from the prosecution’s consideration of how to deal with the criminal responsibility of your partner. I accept that prison conditions on remand during the pandemic have been difficult. Over a prolonged period you have been subject to frequent lockdowns and no prison employment or programs have been available to you. You now appreciate the seriousness of what you did and you wish to avoid a return to prison following your release.
Without understating the seriousness of any of your prior offending, none is as serious as this crime. Although it was opportunistic, it was committed after you had formed a general plan to rob someone and you took the knife intending to use it to cause fear. By your plea of guilty to attempted aggravated carjacking, you admit assaulting the complainant when armed with a knife with intent to take her car, and that you would have taken it had she not removed the keys. When your attempt to take the car failed you stole her handbag and its contents. The most serious aspect of the attempted carjacking is the extent to which it is a crime against a person, the complainant. Although there is no victim impact statement, she told the police that she was very shaken. It is easy to understand why that is so. You told the police, and this Court, that you had no intention to harm her but she was not to know that. You took advantage of her vulnerability to confront her and threaten her with a serrated knife, within the close confines of her own car. It must have been a terrifying experience, and the ongoing impact is very likely to be significant. For those reasons this attempt is hardly less serious than the completed crime.
You admit that this crime constituted a breach of a partially suspended sentence imposed on 31 March 2020 for two counts of unlawful possession of property. It is not argued that activation of the two month suspended part of that term is unjust, and so I must activate it. It should be served cumulatively but I will allow for parole on both sentences. The grant of parole will be a matter for the Parole Board. The head sentence must adequately reflect, in terms of punishment and general deterrence, the criminality in your conduct which, in these circumstances, is similar in nature to attempted armed robbery.
Wade Mackenzie, you are convicted on the indictment. I order that the two month suspended part of the term of imprisonment imposed on 31 March 2020, identified on your prior convictions as global sentence #30 on complaint 1977/2020 be activated and served from 3 February 2021. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served half of that term. On the indictment I impose one sentence. You are sentenced to imprisonment for one year and nine months cumulative to the term just activated. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served eleven months of that term.
The result of the orders just made is imprisonment for one year and eleven months from 3 February 2021 with eligibility to apply for parole after having served one year.