Member for South West Coast Denis Napthine said he had kept a close eye on the recent five-week sitting of the County Court, which finished last Friday.

Of the nine appeals heard in the court, Judge Wendy Wilmoth decided to significantly reduce the penalties of seven offenders - a stunning strike rate of almost 80 per cent.

Five people sentenced to serve time in prison walked free from court.

Dr Napthine said he had kept newspaper clippings from the recent cases and hoped to raise the issue in Parliament this week.

"It is time that the court's sentences met community expectations and the hard-working members of the police force deserve to have some of those criminals serve sentences imposed by a magistrate living in the community,'' he said.

In the most stunning cases, Camperdown couple Gemma Cook and Ben Smart, both 31, of Gunners Street, had their immediate jail terms quashed but only hours after winning their freedom were charged with stealing a purse on the train back home.

Warrnambool City Council has also voiced its disapproval at sentencing and will send letters to Premier John Brumby and the Attorney-General Rob Hulls outlining its concerns.

Dr Napthine said recent decisions in the Warrnambool County Court had been a talking point across the region.

"It doesn't matter if I'm in Warrnambool, Koroit or anywhere else in the electorate this is the issue that is continually raised,'' he said.

In only two cases sentences were not significantly reduced — Bushfield man Jason William Wallace, 36, of Bridge Road, and a youth involved in an assault with steel bars at Hopetoun Road.

Wallace was appearing on his fourth drink-driving charge and blew five times the legal limit (.251).

He has to serve three months of a 12-month sentence.

The youth, who cannot be named, was the only person charged in relation to a brutal assault in which three people were bashed with steel pipes.

During the attack a woman was beaten after she tried to shield an unconscious man with her body.