Where an offender's criminal conduct was an irrational, aberrant response induced by voluntary intoxication and the conduct was out of character, the intoxication is properly treated as a mitigating factor rather than an aggravating feature. However, the use of a firearm while intoxicated remains conduct of the most serious and dangerous kind. No arguable issue of parity arises where one offender is sentenced as an adult and the co-offender as a child under the Children's Court regime. The theoretical possibility that an offence could have been dealt with summarily has negligible impact on sentence where the criminality was too serious for the Local Court.
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