Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The number of children coming into contact with the criminal justice system in Australia is indeed appalling. All levels of government can and must do more to prevent children and young people from coming into contact with the criminal justice system. As Senator Thorpe highlighted, and as I agree—and I thank her for the opportunity to debate this motion—all too often the reasons children come into contact with the criminal justice system arise from poverty and discrimination.

We are, as a government, committed to working with the states and territories to reduce the overrepresentation of First Nations children in detention. In this context, I would like to push my own state government in Western Australia to go further. But, as a federal government, we're working on a number of policy actions, including the First Nations justice reinvestment program. We're establishing a national justice reinvestment unit, which will empower First Nations communities to identify local initiatives to improve justice outcomes and address the drivers of contact with the criminal justice system. In that context, I also think that we can and should do more within our social security system to support, and not disempower, families.

The Attorney-General and the Minister for Indigenous Australians have announced some 20 communities that have been successful in obtaining a justice reinvestment grant, with more to be announced soon. I hope that those programs and commitments will include the kinds of health and mental health services and support that are determined by First Nations communities themselves to be what they need in their local community to support, in particular, children and young people who are grappling with these issues. We really do want this money to address the factors that increase First Nations people's risks when it comes to contact with the criminal justice system. It has to be about local solutions led by local communities, in terms of housing, education, employment, health and income. We also know that there are better justice outcomes when a young person receives early intervention and support in all these kinds of areas.

Justice reinvestment can and should deliver this, but it will take work in our incredibly fragmented systems of government, where too often we see vulnerable children and vulnerable families caught in a trap of systems where state and Commonwealth support services or interventions are not connecting and are, frankly, passing the buck in terms of accountability. All too often we see families who might come into contact with the child protection system and who lose their social security payments, such as family payments and rent assistance, because their children have been taken into care. This in turn makes it incredibly difficult for those parents to ever be able to put a roof back over their children's heads and get on a path where they can restore their family unit and raise their own children. We have for too long really created false dislocations between state and Commonwealth systems when it comes to these issues.

Justice reinvestment, however, is very much on the table, and I hope that we can start looking at these kinds of initiatives at a local level in terms of how we can get social security and child protection systems working better together. We can see a historic $99 million First Nations justice package in the October 2022 budget. (Time expired)