David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Productivity Commission data from earlier this year found that 56.8 per cent of children given detention, probation or parole had reoffended within a year. We know that punitive responses to children's and young people's crimes simply doesn't work. We have to address the underlying drivers of young people's criminal offending: poverty, instability at home, alcohol, mental health concerns and intergenerational trauma. We can't just continue to criminalise young people based on these underlying drivers that they simply don't have any control over.

We know that from the age of 10 to 14 and into young adulthood young people's brains are still developing. They have poor impulse control and have more difficulty making good decisions. For young people with a history of trauma and an unstable or volatile home environment, this is all the more acute. Anyone with young people in their life knows that these are formative stages. Young people need guidance and support. They need to feel seen and loved, and, most importantly, they need to feel safe. What they don't need is to be locked up and forced into a continuous cycle of offending. We know there are evidence based early intervention programs that can support children and young people before they start offending, and there are diversion models that work.

Young people's offending is often a symptom of our societal failure—the systemic and long-term underfunding of our frontline child protection and family violence services, a lack of access to mental health support and intervention and a social safety net that keeps families below the poverty line. We know that children in out-of-home care are significantly more likely to come into contact with the justice system. Here in Canberra First Nations children are 12.9 times more likely to be subject to a child protection order than non-Indigenous children are. This is the third-highest rate in Australia, and it is a real shame on Canberra, a population that voted yes in the referendum to do more listening and to ensure that we see First Nations' solutions listened to and implemented. That's not what I hear is happening with the current Labor-Greens government, despite all the rhetoric about the work they're doing in this space.

We're letting these kids down. We have a responsibility to give every Australian child a safe and healthy childhood where they have the opportunity to grow and thrive. These tough-on-crime approaches are failing Aussie kids. It's time to recognise that and to do better. The federal government, of course, should be leading the way, pulling and pushing the states and territories along.