Section 474.19(1) of the Criminal Code 1995 (Cth), as it stood before the 2010 amendments, contemplated a discrete offence on each occasion a carriage service was used to access child pornography, and multiple acts of accessing could not be rolled up into a single count without risking latent duplicity (per majority; Fryberg J dissenting). Where a count is latently duplicitous and the Crown has not identified which offence is relied upon, the sentencing court cannot sentence for all offences disclosed in the statement of facts without the accused's agreement. The s 16BA procedure under the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) provides an alternative mechanism for taking additional offences into account. The question of whether the word 'use' in the amended provision permits composite charging remains open.
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