Where co-offenders are sentenced on different statements of agreed facts, differences in the evidence before the sentencing judge justify and may demand differences in sentences, and the parity principle does not require the appellate court to resolve contradictory factual bases. The majority of the Court (Button and N Adams JJ) confirmed that discounts for guilty pleas under s 22 should be applied only to indicative sentences, not to the aggregate sentence under s 53A, though the question is not free from doubt. Basten JA's contrary view — that s 22 requires discounting of the aggregate sentence — remains a minority position but provides a detailed statutory construction analysis that may be revisited.
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