The new centre-right Queensland Liberal-National government, which came to power in October after campaigning strongly on harsher sentences, is appealing two cases decided in 2023.
Attorney-General Deb Frecklington called the penalties “manifestly inadequate.”
One appeal will seek to have a longer sentence imposed on a 13-year-old who crashed a stolen car, killing three people and seriously injuring another in 2023.
The youth, accompanied by other juveniles, stole a Mercedes-Benz from a Maryborough home in April 2023 and drove at speeds between 180 and 200 kilometres per hour.
The stolen car later crashed into another vehicle on Queensland’s Fraser Coast, causing the deaths of nurse Sheree Robertson, 52, Kelsie Davies, 17, and pastor Michale Chandler, 29. A fourth woman, 23-year-old Kaylah Behrens, was critically injured.
The offender, who was sentenced to six years’ detention in December, is likely to be released in just over two years.
The other case is that of Brock Andrew McDonald, who pleaded guilty to charges of deprivation of liberty and assault occasioning bodily harm in relation to an attack on an 18-year-old woman in October 2023, after he put a rope around her neck before dragging her into a car in the early hours of the morning.
He was sentenced to 2.5 years but was released on parole in December, taking into consideration 413 days already served, and without recorded convictions.
Frecklington said in her view, the penalties did not meet community standards.
Premier David Crisafulli supported the decision to appeal both sentences, saying the Attorney-General had “nailed it” in her description of the lenient sentences. He believed neither reflected what members of the community wanted to see.
He pointed out that both offenders were tried under former laws, which were replaced by the Liberal-National government’s centrepiece youth crime laws that were urgently passed before Christmas.
The new laws mean youth offenders as young as 10 will be sentenced as adults on a range of serious crimes, including a mandatory life term for murder and manslaughter.
“We have put in place the strongest youth crime laws in the nation, and we’re serious about that,” Crisafulli said.
“We owe it to those families and to every Queenslander to put up a fight.”
