A trial judge exercising the Bunning v Cross discretion must consider the principal 'high public policy' considerations identified by Deane J in Pollard v The Queen — the threat to the legal structure of society and the integrity of criminal justice — and failure to do so constitutes reviewable error. Where police officers hold erroneous views about the scope of their powers of entry that are likely systemic rather than idiosyncratic, this weighs in favour of exclusion. For terminally ill offenders, the non-parole period may be reduced to a merciful level that provides realistic hope of release before death, even where this results in a non-parole period that is an unusually low proportion of the head sentence, but the majority and dissent disagreed on how far this mercy extends.
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