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

Madam Deputy President, I take this opportunity to congratulate you on being reappointed as Deputy President.

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you.

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

I rise tonight to speak on the very urgent matter of youth justice and the need to raise the age of criminal responsibility in this country. Like many others, I watched with horror as the Four Corners program yet again uncovered shocking human rights abuses against children. This time it was in Queensland sites of detention. The program reported that hundreds of children are being held in adult maximum-security watch houses across Queensland, and most of them have not been convicted. It appears we have learned nothing from the lessons of Don Dale, Parkville and the Royal Commission into the Detention and Protection of Children in the Northern Territory, which made 227 recommendations.

Many of these children in detention are very young. Children across Australia continue to experience appalling conditions in youth detention facilities. They are subjected to verbal abuse, restraints, force and isolation. Children are being denied access to basic human needs such as water, food and toilets. They are further isolated by being transferred to facilities located, in some instances, hundreds of kilometres away from their family and community. The supposedly 'tough on crime' approach is appalling and it is failing Australia's children. Youth detention can have a devastating and lifelong impact on a child's psychological and physical health and risks retraumatising young people. This is compounded with detention centres that are not fit for purpose, understaffed and under-resourced. The majority of children currently in detention around Australia are on remand. Their matters are still in court and they have not been found guilty of any criminal activity. Children who are held in detention while awaiting sentencing are particularly vulnerable. These children are separated from their family without access to therapeutic programs. They are also more likely to receive a sentence of imprisonment than a young person released on bail. All young people have the right to fair bail conditions that take their age and circumstances into consideration.

Each year Australia locks up around 600 children under the age of 14 years. These children are locked up in youth detention centres, by and large. Nearly 70 per cent of these children are First Nations children, with First Nations youth 25 times more likely to be in youth detention than non-Indigenous young people. The practices embedded in our juvenile justice system are contributing to the criminalisation of First Nations young people. In 2017 the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples found that routine detention of First Nations children was the most distressing part of her visit. Her report noted:

It is wholly inappropriate to detain children in punitive, rather than rehabilitative, conditions.

Her report also noted that First Nations children 'are essentially being punished for being poor and, in most cases, prison will only perpetuate the cycle of violence, intergenerational trauma, poverty and crime'. This, in our opinion, is a shameful indictment on our justice system. We must work with First Nations people to do better for First Nations young people in this country.

It is now three years since the Northern Territory royal commission started and 18 months since the commission tabled its report. Since then the Territory government has repeatedly backtracked on its commitment to implement the recommendations and findings of the royal commission. What's even worse is that the Territory government has chosen to go against key recommendations by passing retrospective amendments to the Youth Justice Act. It's now backtracked on and undone amendments that it had made to address some of the recommendations.

The Northern Territory royal commission gave us a road map of 227 recommendations, many of which can be used and just implemented in other states. In other words, we have some of the solutions here; we need to implement them. We need to implement these recommendations in the Territory and in other states. And, in particular, we need to focus in the Territory on decommissioning the Don Dale centre and the Alice Springs Youth Detention Centre, both of which came under intense criticism in the royal commission. The recommendations also include increasing the age of criminal responsibility to 12 and only allowing children under 14 years to be detained for serious crimes.

The commission made many other important recommendations, including increasing diversion and therapeutic approaches to youth justice, developing a new model of bail, providing place based services to families, and ensuring that detention is only ever used as a last resort for people up to the age of 17 years. Not only did the commission make a large number of recommendations but a lot of the evidence given to the commission is very worthwhile reading—taking into account and taking on board what those submitters said.

One of the key changes to ensure that children are not in detention is, in fact, stopping them from being in there in the first place. A critical part of doing that is raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years across this country. That should be a minimum. It is unthinkable that children as young as 10 are being charged, brought before courts, sentenced and imprisoned—and also ending up in adult prisons. These are formative years during which a child's brain is undergoing growth and development. Furthermore, we are breaching our obligations under international human rights law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Criminalising young and vulnerable children creates a vicious cycle of disadvantage and entrenches children in the criminal justice system. Early contact with the criminal justice system increases the likelihood of young people further offending and having lifelong involvement with the justice system.

We are also seeing children being put in this situation who have FASD. We know that many children in detention have FASD. Locking up these children further traumatises them, does not address their disabilities, and ensures they are entrenched in the justice system. We know that locking up children is not the answer. We know that children who end up in the justice system have further contact with the justice system. Children don't belong in prisons. They belong in their communities.

Today we call on state, territory and federal governments across Australia to urgently work together to raise the age of criminal responsibility. This is a key change that needs to happen if we are to address this issue. But, of course, it's not the only thing we need to be doing. This must be coupled with a shift towards investment in strategies that reduce contact with the criminal justice system. This includes youth diversionary programs, youth diversion in the justice system and justice reinvestment—in some states they're now calling it social reinvestment. We urgently need to spend at the front end some of the money we spend at the other end of the justice system, to stop young people from having contact with the justice system in the first place. We need a willingness to address the underlying causes of young people's interaction with the justice system. Again, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We know what those causes are and we need to be addressing those causes—and I've spoken on some of those in this chamber a number of times.

While calling for urgent action on youth justice issues, we must ensure that First Nations peoples have control over the development, design and implementation of youth justice programs and policies. Please, don't waste all those resources—not just the commissioners themselves and the royal commission but all the effort that so many witnesses put into that royal commission. Don't waste the 227 recommendations of the Northern Territory royal commission. Some of those are specific to the Northern Territory but many of them apply equally across this country. We can stop young people from being locked up and stop them from being considered as criminals if we put in place programs that stop young people from interacting with the justice system in the first place. (Time expired)

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Siewert. Senator Rice.