Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a teacher for 30 years, I taught hundreds of kids who, through no fault of their own, found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Students experiencing prolonged housing insecurity, hunger or a lack of mental health and disability support often become disengaged. Disengagement leads to nonattendance, and nonattendance means they go looking for other things to do, and some kids make poor choices.

In Queensland, Labor and the LNP are in a race to the bottom on youth crime, but we can't imprison our way to safety. More than 90 per cent of kids who are put behind bars reoffend within a year. If locking up kids actually worked, then Queensland, which leads Australia in putting kids behind all bars, would be the safest place in the country. Despite this, Queensland Labor has wasted $2.6 billion since 2015 on building and expanding youth adult prisons.

When kids engage in criminal behaviour, they're telling us: 'I'm not okay and I need help.' But help doesn't mean punishing them for our failures. It means ensuring they have decent housing, a free and high-quality public education, world-class public health care, a full belly when they go to class, and access to early intervention services and rehabilitation. That's what the Greens will deliver in Queensland, and we'll fund it by making big corporations pay their fair share.