STATE OF TASMANIA v HARLEY DANIEL MURTAGH 9 OCTOBER 2026
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE SLATTERY AJ
Harley Daniel Murtagh, on 10 September 2026, in this Court, you pleaded guilty to the offence of armed robbery and to the offence of assault. The particulars of the offence of armed robbery allege that at Old Beach in Tasmania, on or about 2 March 2026, you robbed Brodie Heath Kelly of his Holden Commodore whilst armed with an offensive weapon. The second count of assault alleges that at the same place and time, you assaulted Brodie Heath Kelly by hitting him to the face.
At the time of these offences, you were 27 years of age and you had known the complainant for about two years. In the morning of 2 March 2026 at about 7am, the complainant arrived home at his address whilst driving his Holden Commodore. He exited his vehicle and left the keys in the ignition. He walked down the driveway of his home, towards the rear yard. At the time, he noticed a white Nissan X Trail vehicle parked on the street near his home. As he was walking down his driveway, two people exited the vehicle and walked down the driveway towards him. He immediately recognised that you were one of the males walking down his driveway.
You walked up to the complainant and said words to the effect “Don’t be fucking stupid, we are just having a chat”. The complainant thought that you were holding a firearm. He said words to the effect of “Don’t do it Harley”. You yelled at him that he should not say your name and that the complainant should walk to his shed in the rear yard.
You then walked with the complainant into a small garden shed at the rear of the driveway. You told the complainant that he would not know why you were doing it, but you are taking his keys and the complainant is not going to ask any questions.
You then forced the complainant into the back corner of his shed and told him to “stop saying my fucking name”. You pulled a weapon out from under your jumper, which the complainant believed was a firearm. It was not a firearm. You then punched the complainant in the face, causing his nose to bleed and one of his lips to split.
The complainant tried to protect himself by covering his face with his hands. You told him to put his hands down and held the weapon up to his face in a threatening manner. You demanded his car keys and you were told that the keys were in the car.
You then told the complainant that you wanted a receipt for the car, as if there was a transaction for the sale and purchase of the car. A piece of paper was retrieved but there was no pen upon which to write on the paper. You then told the complainant to cover his head with a jumper, to walk to the parked Commodore and so that there would be no detection by a neighbour’s cameras. The complainant held the jumper over his face and walked to the vehicle where he found a black marker pen and he used that to write a note saying that he had sold the vehicle to you. In doing so, he was plainly acting under a form of extreme duress.
You then told the complainant that the note was not enough and that you would write it instead. You told the complainant to wait at the end of the driveway. You then walked towards the X Trail vehicle. At that time, you had a lanyard which contained the spare key of the complainant’s motor vehicle. It had been left inside the vehicle at the time it was parked by the complainant.
You then retrieved a piece of green paper from the X Trail and told the complainant to go back inside the shed. You told the complainant not to move anything and not to touch anything. You then wrote a note saying that the complainant sold to you the Holden Commodore motor vehicle M34UJ for the total sum of $13,000 in March 2026. You then both signed the note. You again threatened the complainant telling him “that had better be your fucking signature”.
You then picked up the note and said to the complainant that you had warned him the first time and this time it was not meant to be a warning. You held the weapon up to the complainant’s face and said “Don’t go to the fucking cops and we will know if you have”.
You then forced the complainant to walk out of the shed and then you pulled the spare key for the Commodore vehicle off the lanyard and threw the lanyard back at the complainant. You then got into the driver’s seat of the Commodore vehicle and started the engine. The complainant walked up the side of the driveway, on the passenger side of the Commodore as it began slowly moving out of the driveway.
After a short time later, that vehicle stopped suddenly and you climbed out of the vehicle. The complainant apprehended that you were going to attack him. He ran away from the house, jumped three fences and hid in some bushland until he heard the Commodore vehicle driving away.
The complainant then went back inside of his own home, and went to the laundry to hide. He rang a friend on his phone and that friend advised him to call the police. He then ran outside of his own home, jumped into his other vehicle, which was a Toyota Hilux vehicle, and that was also parked in the driveway. He backed it out of the driveway and started to drive away. When doing so, he noticed that the white Nissan X Trail was still parked outside of his home. It then started to follow him when he was driving away in the Toyota Hilux vehicle.
While he was driving, the complainant rang triple zero to report the incident. He told police that he was being followed and the police operator told him to go directly to the Bridgewater police station. On arrival at the police station, he was met by a police officer who observed that he was crying, shaking, had dried blood under his nose and had cuts on his lips and chin.
At about 8:11am on that same day, police observed the stolen Holden Commodore motor vehicle pulling out of a driveway of a domestic house at Bridgewater. Police deployed a vehicle immobilisation device and successfully stopped the vehicle. You exited the vehicle. You were arrested at the scene. At the time that the complainant’s vehicle was stolen, it contained his wallet, which contained $100 in cash, his driver’s licence, his Bendigo Bank Card, Medicare Care and a $375 Mornington Pub cheque.
The complainant did not require medical treatment for his injuries.
You have a number of prior offences in your antecedents. You have four prior convictions for common assault, one for Code assault, one for aggravated assault, six for unlawfully possessing a dangerous article in a public place, two for stealing, two for motor vehicle stealing, a conviction for possessing a shortened firearm, and for possessing an implement or instrument with the intention of committing a crime.
In December 2021, Justice Estcourt sentenced you to a home detention order for a period of nine months, alongside a Community Corrections Order. In June 2022, that order was breached and his Honour re-sentenced you to three month’s imprisonment, wholly suspended for 12 months. You received a suspended sentence in July 2023 for an aggravated assault. That sentence was for a period of 12 months, wholly suspended for two years and six months. As a result of the breach of the suspended sentence, you were required to serve the whole of that sentence.
You have been in custody on this offending since the date of 2 March 2026.
Ms Van der Meer made submissions on your behalf in relation to your offending. She was unable to explain to me why this offending took place. She informed me that your instructions are that you were so affected by your consumption of drugs, that you cannot provide any reason for your conduct, or any reason why this particular offence took place. She explained that you were then using substances significantly and you cannot explain your actions. You think that you were affected by the substances at that time. You were not able to give her any explanation about why you committed these crimes.
In terms of your personal circumstances, you are 28 years of age, you grew up in Tasmania with your mother and you are of Aboriginal heritage. You have five siblings. Your father passed away when you were an infant and you have lived with a persistent fear that your mother would soon pass away. You have suffered a childhood of significant deprivation and trauma and many of your family members of your greater family group have been involved with the criminal justice system. You have been aware of that since the time you were a young child. You know that family members have been incarcerated for periods of time. This includes your brothers and other family members.
Early in your life, your mother was dependant upon illicit substances and from a young age you were aware of the drug taking occurring in your family. You have also witnessed significant violence in your home and you know that your mother was a victim of family violence and you were completely incapable of helping her because of your age.
Because of your family circumstances, you frequently relocated from place to place and so your schooling was very disrupted. To your credit, you successfully completed Year 10 but could not complete Year 11. I accept the reason was because you had descended into the maelstrom of drug and alcohol addiction.
You have acted as a carer for your mother and you have the support of your mother, who has now largely recovered from her earlier difficulties.
You have struggled with the use of illicit substances since you were a child. You were introduced to alcohol when you were 11 years of age and that was normalised behaviour. At around 12 years of age, you were introduced to cannabis and at 14 to methylamphetamine. Your use of these substances rapidly increased and you say that by the time you were about 15, you were struggling with alcohol and drug dependence. Your mental health commenced to deteriorate as a result and you started experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as suicidal ideation. This explains why you could not go on with your schooling. You were the victim of a stabbing when you were 18 years of age. You did not seek medical attention for that injury and you suffered significantly as a result of consequent infections.
You have had some employment, such as working for a mechanic, and doing some casual labouring, but you do not have a long employment history.
You have been diagnosed with depression and anxiety in about 2020. You regularly engage with your GP. You were prescribed Risperidone. Your counsel informs me that at the time of these offences, you had not been taking your medication for some time and your drug and alcohol abuse had increased.
You have suffered significant childhood adversity. I am satisfied that the principles in R v Bugmy have application. I am informed that in 2020 or 2021, you engaged whole heartedly in the Salvation Army Bridge Programme. You spent time in residential rehabilitation programmes in 2021 and regularly engaged with the Salvation Army Drug and Alcohol Day Programme. You became a leader within the programme. You have been encouraged to think about pursuing a career as a peer support worker due to the insights that you have received.
The difficulty that you have suffered is that you have descended into the maelstrom of drug addictions, notwithstanding all of the efforts that you have made to beat your own addictions. Your drug and alcohol use has escalated. However, you accept that all the aggravating features of this matter as enunciated by the prosecution about this offending, and that the offending is aggravated by the fact that it occurred at the complainant’s home, which is a place at which he is entitled to feel safe. It is further aggravated in that you forced the complainant inside a building, which was a small shed from which he could not escape. It is further aggravated by the fact that the complainant feared for his safety and was placed under such duress that he wrote a false document purportedly transferring the title in his car to you. It was aggravated further by the fact that the complainant was followed from his house and was forced to drive to a police station to seek safety.
You also accept that having struck the complainant in the face, that is a serious form of assault.
Your counsel made submissions about the holding conditions in the southern remand centre. I have taken those matters into account. You are on a Suboxone management programme in order to manage your substance cravings.
You accept that an order should be made under s 68 of the Sentencing Act for a compensation order to be made in relation to the items belonging to the complainant, which were inside the car but which were not recovered. The order is for a compensation order in an amount to be assessed. That order is made.
I turn to sentencing. I have already stated that I accept that the principles enunciated in R v Bugmy are applicable. I have taken those matters into account. A proper reconciliation of those principles is set out by the majority at [43]. The majority held that the experience of growing in an environment surrounded by alcohol abuse and violence may leave its mark on a person throughout life. Among other things, a background of that kind may compromise a person’s capacity to mature and to learn from experience. It is a feature of a person’s make up and remains relevant to the determination of the appropriate sentence, notwithstanding that the person has a long history of offending. At [44], the majority said that because the effects of profound childhood deprivation do not diminish with the passage of time and repeated offending, it is right to speak of giving full weight to an offender’s deprived background in every sentencing decision. An offender’s childhood exposure to extreme violence and alcohol abuse may explain the offender’s recourse to violence when frustrated such that the offender’s moral culpability for the inability to control that impulse may be substantially reduced. However, the inability to control the violent responses to frustration may increase the importance of protecting the community from the offender.
Any sentence that I fix must have regard to the requirement for specific and general deterrence, as well as denunciation of your conduct and reflecting condign punishment. You have been given the benefit previously of a number of suspended sentences and Community Corrections Orders. Notwithstanding the attempts made by this Court to assist you in your rehabilitation, you have not taken advantage of those orders.
The offending is serious. You have invaded the home of the complainant, threatened him, assaulted him, stolen his motor vehicle and then stolen the contents of that motor vehicle. You have threatened him both in his home and outside of his home, and it was necessary for him to seek the assistance of the police for his own protection. You continued to threaten him in the manner I have described. In light of those matters, there is also a need for consideration of general deterrence in fixing sentence. For the same reasons, and from an objective point of view when discussing general deterrence, these are serious crimes in respect of which the Court must fix penalties which record the denunciation of this conduct. I think one of the most tragic features of this matter is that no one has been able to explain to me why it is that you committed these crimes in the way that you did. In one sense, you could only have committed these crimes whilst you were significantly affected by drugs because ultimately, the police were always likely to detect you on the road driving the very vehicle stolen from another person.
That leads, however, to the need for sufficient denunciation for this conduct. People are entitled to feel safe in their homes, they are entitled to expect that their vehicles will not be stolen in circumstances of personal violence being inflicted upon them, and where they could also expect not to be continually threatened.
I intend to fix one sentence in this matter. That is, the sentence in relation to both offences is to be served concurrently. I have reached the clear conclusion that a sentence of imprisonment is the only appropriate sentence. For the offence of armed robbery, I sentence you to a period of incarceration of 36 months. For the offence of assault, I sentence you to a period of incarceration of 3 months, to be served wholly concurrently with the sentence for armed robbery. That leaves a sentence of 36 months. I consider that you must be given full benefit for having indicated your willingness to plead guilty at the earliest possible opportunity. I consider that you should be given the highest possible discount for your sentence that I can give you. I therefore discount your sentence by 25 per cent. That leaves a sentence of 27 months. I backdate the commencement of your sentence to 2 March 2026, the date you were taken into custody. I order that you are not to be released upon parole until you have served fifty per cent of the remaining sentence.