Jailed ex-Morwell MP Russell Northe will remain behind bars after losing bid for freedom

Disgraced ex-Morwell MP Russell Northe, who used taxpayer cash to fund a gambling addiction, will remain behind bars after failing to win an appeal against his sentence.

Former MP Russell Northe has failed to win a bid for freedom. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Jailed ex-Morwell MP Russell Northe – who was convicted for using taxpayer money to fund a gambling addiction – will remain behind bars after a failed attempt to appeal his sentence

Northe’s lawyers submitted to the court of appeals that the 21-month sentence he received in October last year was excessive and did not consider his “long history of psychiatric ill health”.

He was jailed after he gambled away more than $170,000 of taxpayer money that had been allocated to him for administration expenses while he was an Independent MP.

His lawyers argued that a community corrections order should have been imposed rather than jail.

The Court of Appeal previously heard that Northe suffered major depressive disorder and that he attempted to take his own life after he was informed by a journalist that a story would break about his offending.

Northe gambled away $170,000 of taxpayer money. Picture : David Geraghty / The Australian.

In their judgment, Justices Phillip Priest and Stephen McLeish said they were “unable to accept that the sentence was manifestly excessive” as Northe’s offending “profoundly breached” community trust.

“This was a very serious example of misconduct in public office,” the panel found.

“It involved deliberate and brazen fraudulent conduct of some sophistication,

undertaken over a protracted period, by which the applicant dishonestly appropriated

some $173,000 of public revenue.”

Northe’s legal team also previously submitted that the sentencing judge made an error in “presuming” that Northe would be paroled, remarking at the time that “once you’ve served and been admitted to parole … you’ll be able to adapt to new life”.

But the panel dismissed this claim, finding that the sentencing judge made “no assumption regarding the granting of parole”.

“That conclusion had nothing to do with the question whether parole was granted,” the appeal judges said.

“It would apply from whatever point the applicant was released from prison, and the reference to parole simply indicates that this might occur upon a grant of parole.”

The panel of judges also agreed that the original sentence “reflected the very careful attention given by the judge to a particularly challenging sentencing task”.

The maximum penalty for Northe’s offending was 10 years’ imprisonment.

Leave to appeal was refused.