Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

You said they will go to jail. I have been advised—and that is as good as it gets—that jail will be for blacks or whites. There is no particular provision in the explanatory memorandum or anywhere else in the legislation for that. The principle is that this is a demographic that is hugely overrepresented, no matter how you spin it, and it is on the discovery of the huge overrepresentation of child abuse in Indigenous children that these provisions have been provided—to give them further protection around Australia. The notion that the only criminal proceedings taken as a consequence of those investigations will end up with Aboriginal people being locked up is a complete nonsense and it is not a part of this legislation.