David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to join with my colleague Senator Waters to support this amendment. When this legislation was first presented to parliament, the federal Attorney-General was queried about it by ABC journalist Raf Epstein. Concerns were raised with the Attorney-General that the law would likely see kids locked up and put in jail, to which the Attorney-General replied, 'Potentially, yes,' and then sought to suggest that there wasn't an issue because, 'Children are treated differently to adults in the justice system.' He was pressed on it in the interview, and the Attorney said, 'It's going to be a matter for courts, but, by and large, children are not jailed in Australia.' He then said that police would obviously exercise discretion.

The Attorney-General is living in a different Australia to the one that we witness, that First Nations kids witness and that young kids from poor communities witness. When the Attorney-General says, 'By and large, children are not jailed in Australia,' perhaps he hasn't been reading the data. Perhaps he hasn't been talking to state and territory jurisdictions. Perhaps he hasn't even been looking at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, which, in its report into youth justice in Australia in 2022-23, found that on average during that year, there were 828 young people in jail aged between 10 and 17. I ask: is the Attorney-General right where he says, 'By and large, children are not jailed in Australia'?

When you look at the number of kids washing in and out of jail, that same report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare said that over the 2022-23 year—the last year we have full data for—some 4,605 children spent time in jail in Australia. On an average day, there were 42 kids aged between 10 and 13 in jails in this country. Over the course of 2022-23, 600 different kids aged between 10 and 13 went to jail. I say again: the Attorney-General, when he says, 'By and large, children are not jailed in this country', seems to be living in a very different country—perhaps a more privileged country, where you don't talk to First Nations communities and families and where you don't talk to kids and families that come from regional parts of the states or some of the areas in our cities with poorer socioeconomic indicators. Perhaps in the Attorney-General's country—the one he and the people he talks to inhabit—kids don't go to jail. But in this actual country they do—this country where, if we were to go and look at the jails in the Northern Territory right now, there'd be a bunch of kids in those two detention centres, and every single one of them would be First Nations.

Or we could go to WA and look at the torture-like conditions in which kids are held in WA prisons. The Supreme Court has repeatedly called them out and said that they are torture-like conditions and has demanded the closing of those brutal child prisons. But the state government has done nothing and the federal Attorney-General has done nothing because the federal Attorney-General, it turns out, thinks that, by and large, kids aren't put in jail in Australia.

And we could have a look at the cruel institution in Tasmania which has been the subject of a royal commission. The royal commission found that girls as young as 13 were being put into that children's jail and the girls, when they turned up at the jail at age 13, were put on the pill so that they didn't become pregnant because the authorities knew about the extent of sexual abuse and assault of girls in that jail. That's a child's jail in this country—the same country where the Attorney-General says, by and large, kids aren't being put in jail.

When the Commonwealth goes to put yet another criminal offence on the statute books, one involving social media and the sharing of social media images, we say, 'Don't put kids aged 10, 11, 12 and 13 into jail for this,' because we know what will happen. We know they will be abused. If they go to a jail in WA, it's certain they'll be abused. They'll be in torture-like conditions. They'll be put in a watch house in Queensland. Every kid that gets jailed in the Northern Territory under this is almost certain to be a First Nations kid. And that cruel institution in Tasmania, the one the royal commission pointed out, is still operating.

I support the amendment and I'd urge everybody in this chamber, when the Attorney-General says things like this, that by and large kids don't get jailed in this country, to just pretend it's not a problem, check it. Test it. Talk to people in your states. Talk to families who expect their kids to get stopped and searched and potentially jailed just for the crime of being black in a public place in this country. Don't just rubberstamp this stuff and think it doesn't matter, that kids will somehow be protected by the rhetoric of the Attorney, because they won't.