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

I rise tonight to speak of an issue of the utmost importance. Yesterday I had the pleasure of co-hosting the launch of a report from the Change the Record Coalition, Blueprint for change: changing the record on the disproportionate imprisonment rates, and rates of violence experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I seek leave to table a copy of that report.

Leave granted.

The Change the Record Coalition is a group of leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups, human rights groups and legal and community organisations, and they are calling for urgent and coordinated national actions to close the gap in imprisonment rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and cut the disproportionate rate of violence experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly women and children.

We desperately need the actions that are recommended in this report. One of the points that was made both in the report and at the launch yesterday, by Kirstie Parker, one of the co-chairs of the coalition, was that, when the royal commission in 1991 handed down its report on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were seven times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, but we have gone backwards and now it is 13 times more likely that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will be incarcerated than non-Aboriginal Australians. In the past 10 years we have seen an 88 per cent increase in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison. And Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 34 times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to be hospitalised as a result of family violence. This costs socially, of course, but also economically, and it is vital that we take a different approach.

That is why this blueprint is so important. It makes a number of recommendations and talks about a number of strategies. Very importantly, the Change the Record Coalition call for a whole-of-government approach, via COAG, to this issue. They talk about justice targets and an independent central agency to help coordinate work and a legislative approach. We need different policies to the approach that we have been taking. They are calling for an urgent and coordinated national action to close the gap in imprisonment rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The report talks about the importance of justice targets. We are at that spot again, talking about justice targets. The Change the Record Coalition's targets are to close the gap in the rates of imprisonment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples by 2040 but to halve the rate by 2030 and to cut the disproportionate rates of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to at least the same as the rest of Australia by 2040, with priority strategies for women and children.

They talk very clearly in the report about the need for a human rights based approach to resources and capacity building for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues. They talk about the four key principles that should underpin any action: self-determination, respect, culture and identity. Then they map out 12 policy principles that need to be addressed, including justice reinvestment, which talks about investing in community, not in prisons, and the need to support local communities, addressing the driving forces behind imprisonment and making sure that there are suitable services, intensive family support, early intervention and, very importantly, community controlled organisations and community decision making. They talk about services, not sentences; they talk about community orientated policing, smarter sentencing and not mandatory sentencing—which is one of the reasons for such an escalating incarceration rate. They talk about community justice and addressing the issues around young people in prison. These issues urgently need to be addressed.

I would go so far as to say that many people will have heard a lot of this before, but it has been brought together in this report by such a powerful group of organisations getting together to say 'this has to stop; we need to change the record. Government, please listen to this. Engage with the discussion around justice targets. I know this place is keen on a multiparty approach to this issue, so please read this report and let us together change the record.

Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise tonight to talk about the launch of Change the Record Coalition's blueprint for change. Change the Record is a coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander human rights, legal and community organisations calling for urgent and coordinated national action to close the gap in the imprisonment rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and to cut rates of violence experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly women and children.

It was at the launch that I met Keenan, a youth worker from Redfern who told the reality of his life—a life of crime, drugs, alcohol and cigarettes, transformed by a justice reinvestment program which began in jail and continued through to Keenan's release back into the community.

Keenan was born and raised in Redfern. He lost both of his parents at an early age and fell in with kids who got into trouble. Keenan soon found himself doing time in juvenile justice centres. So from a very young age Keenan was in and out of juvenile detention and spent most of his birthdays detained. He had no positive role models. Most of his family and friends were detained along with him. At 18 he was sentenced to adult prisons—again doing time for crime, again spending time in and out of adult prisons, until he got to the age of 25 and two things happened. First, he met two old Koori fellas in Goulburn prison who laughingly told him they had 100 years of imprisonment between them. Second, he started doing a justice reinvestment programme in the jail—a three-step program which supported him in the prison.

Once he was released back into the community, Keenan slowly turned his life around, giving up the drugs, the alcohol and the cigarettes. Keenan says it was a hard slog but definitely worth doing. At 27, Keenan got his first job and his first tax file number—all of which was made much more difficult as his birth was never registered.

Keenan is now working as an advocate and youth worker in Redfern with Weave's Kool Kids Club program. Given his powerful speech yesterday—there was hardly a dry eye in the room at Change the Record—I know that Keenan is a powerful advocate and an important role model for the young people he works with. And he is an example of why we need to do more to ensure that all young people, but particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth, get access to justice reinvestment programs rather than detention.

The core recommendations of the Change the Record Coalition's blueprint for change call for a whole-of-government strategy, justice targets, national agreement on how we report information and an independent central agency with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander oversight to coordinate a consistent national approach to data collection.

Given the shamefully high rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander imprisonment, it is time for urgent action. Having met Keenan yesterday I know from his story that there are many Keenans in juvenile justice in adult prisons who—if given a chance, given a different approach—make fine, upstanding human beings who give back to their communities. Keenan and his partner are expecting a baby in a couple of weeks. He will be an amazing father. He will be a role model for his future child and future children, as he is a role model for young children from the ages of seven in Redfern today. Let's get on and start with that national coordinated approach. Let's give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people justice for the first time.