Adding in the conclusion: ‘The decision in Dunn does nothing to advance the fight against ingrained and unjustified manifestations of prejudice. … On the contrary, it lends support to opponents of hate crime law who argue that there is no sound basis upon which to draw a coherent line between those groups that should be protected and those that should not.’
2.
The original 1999 Act was arguably the then government's attempt to implement the recommendations of the 1996 NSW Law Reform Commission Report 79 (1996) – Sentencing, which noted the need for judicial discretion to be tempered by ‘consistency in sentencing’ (see section 1.8 of the report citing Lowe v The Queen (1984) 154 CLR 606 at 610–611).
3.
R v Skaf, Ghanem and Hajeid [2004] NSWCCA 74 (7 April 2004).
4.
This was the view of the minor parties and independents. See New South Wales, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Council, 20 November 2002, 7062, and 21 November 2002, 7291.
5.
A statute should be read as a whole and given its plain and ordinary meaning.
6.
Justice Hoeben (with whom Handley AJA & Smart AJ agreed) in Dunn v Regina [2007] NSWCCA 312), emphasis added.
