Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This report is an absolutely critical report. As the commission itself says in the conclusion of this multivolume report, this presents an opportunity to bring about a fundamental shift in policy, not only in the youth justice and child protection system but in the wider NT community. Anybody who has read this report would have been devastated by the situation it outlines in the Northern Territory.

We saw the awful vision from Four Corners that ensured that this royal commission was kicked off. The report makes a large number of recommendations. Most of them are directed at the Northern Territory, but many also have direct relevance for the federal government. Many of the recommendations go into a lot of detail about the Northern Territory system, but many of them are also raising issues that have been repeated time and time again.

There are recommendations that talk about the care and detention systems. The report talks about the distressing mistreatment of Aboriginal children who never should have been in prison in the first place. It talks about children who have been subjected to the most appalling and distressing mistreatment. The system was cruel and uncaring. The report makes a large number of recommendations about the need for change: the need to ensure that we have better residential accommodation; that the arrest system is better; that the bail system is better; that diversion is practised; that the court system is better; that the child protection system is better; and that we have early supports that need to focus on children in the care system—on children receiving the care and on supporting and enabling families.

It talks about giving kids a voice. The recommendations talk about an audit of Commonwealth expenditure and of the Commonwealth engaging in place based approaches to early interventions and child support. It talks about partnerships with the Aboriginal community, something that the government has talked about for years but has never practiced.

Today, down on the front lawns of parliament, we saw the Change the Record group, which talks about smarter justice and safer communities, release their document, Free to be kids: national plan of action. It outlines eight approaches that need to be taken to address the appalling rate of Aboriginal children going into the justice system and how they are treated.

This report also outlines some of the processes that the royal commission addresses: things like supporting children, families and communities to stay strong and together; raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14; and getting children who are not sentenced out of prison. A large number of children that were in prison that are addressed in the royal commission report should not be there. They have not been sentenced; they're on remand in there. It talks about adequate funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled legal support systems and ending abusive systems in prison. The report outlines appalling treatment and use of restraints in the NT juvenile justice system. It talks about setting targets. Again, we are talking about setting targets to end overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in prison. It talks about improving the collection and use of data, something the royal commission talks about, and working through COAG to reform states and territories that breach children's rights. All these issues are issues the Commonwealth need to be working on as well, not washing their hands, not trying to pretend it's all the states' and territories' responsibilities. The Commonwealth has a big responsibility here.

I would like to take the opportunity to table the Change the Record Free to be kids: national plan of actionreport and urge senators to read this as well as reading the royal commission.

Leave granted.

We all have a responsibility to ensure that people that stand in this place in the future never, ever have to talk about the appalling findings of a royal commission into children in detention in any place in this country. Please read it. Please implement it.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.