Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim
New South Wales parliament passed legislation on 4 June 2026 that will, upon assent on a yet to be specified date (or 28 days after passing if no date is specified), abolish the ability of the courts to consider whether a person who has pleaded guilty to, or been found guilty of, any criminal offence was of prior “good character” – a factor which can currently be taken into account during the sentencing process and lead to a more lenient penalty than would otherwise be imposed.
This was the second time this year that NSW Labor attempted to pass this law, as on its first try, its legislation was amended in the upper house, so the measure only related to sexual offences.
New South Wales attorney general Michael Daley introduced the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Amendment (Good Character at Sentencing) Bill 2026 on 13 May, which was the day after the lower house agreed to pass the amendments made by NSW Liberal and Greens MLCs. And the state’s chief lawmaker explained he was reintroducing the initial proposal again, as its impact had been misunderstood.
Section 21A(3) of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) (CSP Act) contains a list of mitigating factors, or characteristics relating to a criminal act or the person convicted over it, that either show the offence wasn’t as bad as it could have been, or they can make an offender less culpable or appear more favourable, and therefore, it acts to reduce the severity of their sentence.
Two main reasons were provided for the reform. The first was that victim-survivors should not be subjected to the court’s consideration of how upstanding the person who offended against them is during sentencing, and the second being that the ability to prove good character was found to be more available to privileged people and less available to the marginalised and disadvantaged.
The removal of good character means that character references or witness testimonies pertaining to that factor will no longer be considered at sentencing. And while key legal stakeholders continued to oppose it, the government raised it again and the Liberal opposition conceded to pass the reform the second time around.
An amendment with precedent
As the NSW AG has explained, in 2023, he met with childhood victim-survivors Harrison James and Jarad Grice, who run the campaign ‘Your Reference Ain’t Relevant’, which calls for ‘good character’ to be removed from sentencing considerations. And this led Daley to put the question of whether good character should be a mitigating factor for any crimes to the NSW Sentencing Council in 2024.
As Daley explained, during his speech on the second successfully passed bill, the Sentencing Council’s report recommended removing good character as a mitigating factor not just based on the “impact on victims”, but because it considered the factor to be “vague, uncertain and subjective” in nature, and it found it was unjustifiable “to mitigate a sentence based on a form of social accounting.”
The NSW Bar Association opposed the removal of good character as it was part of a process of individualised sentencing that factored in not only the offending but the offender as a “whole person”, while the Aboriginal Legal Service opposed it as it considered it was “not synonymous with social privilege”, and it had permitted consideration of their clients’ community contributions.
But removing good character in relation to certain offences has precedent, as a 2008-enacted ‘special rule’ contained in subsection 21A(5A) of the CSP Act, stipulates that in sentencing child sex offenders, their good character or ‘lack of previous convictions’ can’t be taken into account as a mitigating factor if it’s considered to have assisted them in committing their crimes.
The original NSW Labor legislation passed the lower house a few days after its introduction into parliament in February, however, when it underwent its second reading debate in the Legislative Council in May, the NSW Liberals and the NSW Greens both successfully moved amendments to limit the reform so that it only applied to sexual offences, and that is the law that passed.
The content of the law
Passed a fortnight ago, the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Amendment (Good Character) Bill 2026 does not yet have a date of enactment, as the statement of public interest that accompanied the legislation outlines that it will commence on proclamation. This delay is so that judicial officers and legal practitioners can be informed about the reforms prior to commencement.
The main change the bill involves is the removal of good character from subsection 21A(3)(f) of the CSP Act. Subsection 21A(3) of the CSP Act contains a list of mitigating factors, which, if they relate to a case, serve to reduce a sentence, while subsection 21A(2) contains aggravating factors, which can make a sentence more severe. And there is no limit to how many factors can be raised in sentencing.
This change is also accompanied by three new subsections. Subsection 21A(5D) abolishes the common law principle requiring good character be considered. Subsection 21A(5E) provides evidence adduced solely for the purpose of good character not being able to be considered on sentencing, while subsection 21A(5F) conveys that evidence adduced for other reasons can be.
The legislation further removes ‘character’ as something to factor in when considering whether to sentence a person to a conditional release order with a conviction, under section 9 of the CSP Act, as well as removing it from section 10, when a court decides to dismiss a charge against a person found guilty, or if it makes such an order with a condition that the individual also undertakes a program.
Daley’s bill further repeals subsection 21A(3A) of the CSP Act, which had been a reform inserted into NSW Labor’s original good character removal bill, so that after the factor was only removed from sexual offences, this provision ensured that even if evidence had been “raised in court about a defendant’s good character”, the judge didn’t have to give it any weight in determining a sentence.
Subsection 21A(5AA) through to subsection 21A(5AD) of the CSP Act are also to be removed. These are the NSW Greens amendments to NSW Labor’s original bill that stipulated that while good character had remained as a mitigating factor, it could not be considered in terms of sexual offences.
A definition of “sexual offences” inserted under subsection 21A(6) by NSW Labor’s original bill has been repealed and a slight change has been made to subsection 21A(5B), so it reflects the removal of subsections 21A(5AA) to 21A(5AD). As per the last bill’s changes, the special rule that ensures self-intoxication cannot be used as a mitigating factor remains under subsection 21A(5AE).
The new legislation further removes “antecedent character”, or prior character, from section 45 of the CSP Act, so that it cannot be a factor when a court decides to decline to set a non-parole period for a person being sentenced. This change replaces the compound noun with “antecedents”, which means the court can consider past events relating to the case or offender when making this decision.
Further section 108 of the CSP Act, which was inserted into the bill in early May to require that the minister review good character reforms 2 years after they’ve been enacted and then produce a report within 12 months after that inquiry commenced, was altered so that the provision now applies to the new laws under the just passed bill that completely abolished good character.
Abolishing a clean record?
There is a stipulation at the end of the amending legislation that explains that the abolition of good character consideration can relate to an offence perpetrated before or after the commencement of the new laws, and they also pertain to criminal proceedings that have begun before or after these laws come into play.
As for the special rule relating to child sexual offences under subsection 21A(5A) of the CSP Act, it remains in the manner in which NSW Labor’s first bill had left it in, which means that convicted child sex offenders continue not to be able to have their “lack of previous convictions” considered as a mitigating factor on sentencing if that fact was of assistance in the commission of their crimes.
So, after the present reform, this really does lead one to question if the mitigating factor involving whether an “offender does not have any record (or any significant record) of previous convictions”, which now sits under subsection 21A(3)(e) of the CSP Act, might one day too be abolished as a mitigating factor from all criminal offences.
