Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to congratulate the newly formed Amnesty International Australia Water Gardens group. This is a group of local constituents who have come together to form a local chapter of Amnesty International in my electorate. They meet on a monthly basis to discuss and promote human rights issues. Their meetings are held at the Sydenham library and they are building solid networks in our local community. There are 700 international Amnesty International supporters in my electorate and the aim of the group is to increase that number. Recently they had a stall at the Brimbank City Council's asylum seeker expo as part of their campaign to raise awareness in the local community about important human rights violations.

I had the great pleasure of meeting Meni and Krish, who are from the local Amnesty International chapter in Water Gardens. They came to see me as the federal member of order to draw my attention to Amnesty International's new report on Indigenous youth justice titled A brighter tomorrow: keeping Indigenous kids in the community and out of detention in Australia. This report is the result of extensive research undertaken by Amnesty International between 2013 in 2015 and it makes practical recommendations for the federal, state and territory governments to consider ways in which to reduce their overrepresentation of Indigenous young people in the criminal justice system in Australia.

The most concerning aspect of this report is that it tells us Indigenous young people are now locked up at 26 times the rate of non-Indigenous young people despite the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island youth account for only just five per cent of the Australian population in detention of 10 to 17-year-olds.

These statistics in relation to the incarceration of Indigenous youth should concern us all. It certainly concerns the members of my local Amnesty International group, who care deeply about this issue. They believe that all children deserve a fair start in life. Their message to me and to this parliament is:

… kids have healthy happy childhoods when they live in loving and nurturing communities. We believe that disadvantaged kids should be supported to rise above their circumstances and this is not achieved by current government policies of separating them from their communities and locking them up.

One of the main recommendations of this report is that government adopts a justice reinvestment approach in order to address underlying issues that Aboriginal youth face today. My local Amnesty group strongly supports initiatives such as the New South Wales town of Bourke's Maranguka Justice Reinvestment Project initiative, which came to fruition in 2013 when a local Aboriginal leaders and young people, and community members, organisations, local agencies and government representatives came together to develop programs that helped to keep Indigenous young people out of custody.

This community-led approach to solving problems is widely regarded as a better approach, and the case for change will be made to the New South Wales government shortly. My local Amnesty group want this parliament to understand—and again, I quote:

… such initiatives have enormous potential to reduce the numbers of incarcerated indigenous children, create safer communities and reduce government expenditure on juvenile detention.

There are 16 recommendations in this report in total, amongst them being the recommendation to increase the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 years to 12 years of age.

In my electorate there is already an overrepresentation of young people in the juvenile justice system. They are not necessarily Indigenous youth; there are also South Pacific Islanders and some from the Middle East. But the challenges and concerns that our community has for our local youth are similar to the ones we share in common with the community of Bourke. I believe that we can all learn from each other and that whilst there may be some differences, essentially we all share the same belief that caring and stable families and communities form the best environment for the healthy development of young people. Ultimately, it is our responsibility as a community to provide the necessary care and support so that our local kids can flourish.

I would like to thank the Watergardens group for raising this with me. I look forward to catching up with them in the near future. I will continue to advocate on their behalf. I would also like to refer the House to the recommendations of this report. I commend the report to the House.

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