Hands up which one of you who is condemning Judge Sarah Bradley for handing out non-custodial sentences in the Aurukun rape case will also protest at the sentences handed out to the group of young Sydney Muslim men who received a collective total of 240 years’ jail time for a series of gang rapes in that city in 2000?

And will you protest at the fact that, under Western Australia’s notorious three strikes law, an 11-year-old Aboriginal boy from northern Western Australia who stole food and water to feed himself copped a minimum 12-month sentence in detention in Perth?

If this community wants to debate sentencing in our courts, then it needs to end its practice of selective outrage. We need to be highlighting sentences which, on any measure, are outrageously harsh. In the case of the Sydney gang rapes, when Judge Michael Finnane handed down the harshest sentences in NSW history for rape, many people, including elements of the media, took the view that these were bad Muslim boys raping white girls and sending them to jail for fifty years or more was fair enough. No-one said, “Hang on a minute, why are these sentences so high compared with similar cases?”

In Western Australia the case cited above is one of thousands that go before the courts each day. Why aren’t such injustices front page news? Why do we permit our parliaments to pass three strikes and you’re in laws, or to impose mandatory minimum sentences for crimes where to do so leads to gross injustices, such as a kid stealing an ice-cream being jailed for 12 months.

Every day around this country judges and magistrates hand out long jail terms to unfortunate people when to do so is unjust and counterproductive. But we don’t care. We only care if we think the sentence is “too lenient”. It’s time to get some balance into the debate.