The ACT Supreme Court should have considered a wider range of punishment options when it sentenced former National Party Member Michael Cobb over travel rorts. It sentenced him to a two-year suspended jail term and a fine of $14,000. Neither is a suitable sentence. The two-year suspended sentence means nothing. It might be suitable in a case of an aggressive young man who was likely to reoffend to act as a deterrent. But it is extremely unlikely that Cobb will re-offend. The fine, too, is of little moment. As came out in evidence, Cobb is fairly well off. Indeed, the fact he is well off makes his crime worse. It is not as if he stole to feed his starving children.
Cobb’s case is a disquieting one. It was not a one-off matter, but a pattern of offences. It was not a case of someone dealt a tough hand by life. To the contrary.
Cobb’s crime is the greater because it involves a breach of trust. People such as MPs and other professionals are often put on an honour system. Very few checks and audits are made because they are trusted. The breach of trust is therefore more serious than the small amount of money might otherwise suggest. It is an attack on the honour system itself. It now means we have to devise a system in which it is assumed that some MPs cannot be trusted. Cobb and the one or two others similarly convicted must carry the burden for that.
A suspended jail sentence and a fine is simply not enough penalty for a crime that has such a profound effect on the way society sees its elected representatives. The community will most likely remain disgusted because the penalty was not made high enough for Cobb to forfeit his parliamentary pension, nearly all of which comes from the public purse from which he stole. It did not need a long term of imprisonment, but at least community service if not weekend detention or a short custodial term would have better suited the crime.