Rita Panahi: A convicted killer in Essendon changerooms latest example of Victoria’s broken justice system
That a man convicted of killing someone in late 2018 was free to visit the Essendon change rooms in 2024 is one more alarming example of how out of step Victorian sentences are with community expectations.
Opinion
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A recent story about the Essendon Football Club brought home, again, just how broken the justice system is in this state.
It was revealed on the weekend that the individual whose presence in the changerooms prompted the AFL’s integrity unit to contact the club was convicted killer Kamil Yucel; even more shocking was the fact that the offence took place in 2016.
In a civilised, well-functioning system someone guilty of shooting a young man dead in a suburban street in 2016 would still be behind bars in 2024, not trying to dodge Roaming Brian in the Bombers’ changerooms.
But alas we live in Victoria with a justice system that is too often short on justice, and where the interests of offenders is routinely prioritised over that of victims and the wider community.
In the case of the Essendon interloper he copped a measly five-year term, with a three-year minimum, after he waited until the day of his murder trial to plead guilty to manslaughter.
With time served he was eligible for parole within months of being sentenced in the Supreme Court in September 2018.
Manifestly inadequate sentences diminish faith in the justice system.
One would hope that a state government focused on community safety would do all it can, including legislating mandatory minimum terms, to ensure that judges hand out sentences in line with community expectations.
But alas the Jacinta Allan government is too busy listening to the activist class.
Despite the majority of Victorians rejecting the race-based Voice, the state government is pressing ahead with a state-based treaty with the Indigenous community.
In preparation for that lunacy it is forcing thousands of Department of Justice and Community Safety staff to undergo “white privilege” training as part of a broader Aboriginal cultural awareness and Aboriginal cultural safety workshops.
This rotten ideology is corrupting our institutions.
Last week we learned that the country’s peak judicial body, the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration, endorsed a 200-page guidebook telling judges to consider “the pervasive intergenerational effects of settler-colonialism” and the “legacy of trauma and dispossession” when presiding on a case with an Indigenous defendant.
Identity politics is infecting and undermining every public institution from the police to the courts to the bureaucracy.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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