Linda Burney (Barton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to express my alarm. The first acts of the new Country Liberal government in the Northern Territory and the Liberal-National government in Queensland have been to take many steps backward and drive First Nations people into more disadvantage.

In October the Northern Territory government legislated to criminalise children as young as 10. This was barely a year after the previous Labor government deemed 12 as the age of criminal responsibility. Tough-on-crime policies can be electorally popular, but most Australians would be surprised at how far those kinds of policies can go. Yesterday researchers at Edith Cowan University released a study that found that 94 per cent of Western Australians did not know that children as young as 10 can be incarcerated. Many were shocked. A child is just that: a child. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are one of the most incarcerated people on earth. Prison sentences without rehabilitation won't stop reoffending. Locking children up sets them up for a life in the justice system.

The Chief Minister is also promising to drop alcohol policies that are working. We know minimum unit pricing and trading restrictions are changing lives. In Darwin there has been a 14 per cent drop in alcohol related assaults and a 21 per cent reduction in domestic and family violence assaults involving alcohol. In Tennant Creek, purchase limits and reduced trading hours have resulted in a 92 per cent drop in alcohol fuelled family violence and domestic assaults—92 per cent! Instead of improving something that's working, the Country Liberals plan to criminalise public drunkenness, to lock people up and not tackle the root problem. I am proud of opposition leader Selena Uibo and our Labor colleagues in the territory for standing up to bad laws. We must call out the harm these policies will do.

Abandonment of the truth-telling and treaty process in Queensland by the new Liberal-National premier, David Crisafulli, is disheartening and has caused much distress. Just over a year ago he voted to support the process. These aren't just symbolic processes. They are practical ways to address the pain of history and find solutions to prevent harm in the future.

Participants in both the Queensland truth-telling process and the Victorian Yoorrook Justice Commission say that it is cathartic to have their experiences on the public record. Many are members of the stolen generations, people who have faced injustice.

There is nothing divisive about recognising what has come before. We can't make practical decisions without knowing what brought us to this point. We don't have to choose between so-called practical and symbolic reconciliation. Instead, the Premier and the Chief Minister have chosen to present this false choice to Queensland and the Northern Territory. The claim is that truth-telling and treaty divide the community. What is divisive is dismissing those calling our harm as 'southern do-gooders', ignoring history because it's hard to hear and backing away from treaty processes that are committing to seeing justice done. But this won't stop Indigenous Australians from speaking up, and I raise my voice here tonight.