Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Thorpe has submitted a proposal under standing order 75 today:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The Federal Government must take national leadership to support children who are currently or at risk of coming into contact with the criminal legal system by applying a rights-based approach grounded in evidence and best practice."

Is the consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I believe that the proposal is supported. With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clocks in line with informal arrangements made by the whips.

Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The Federal Government must take national leadership to support children who are currently or at risk of coming into contact with the criminal legal system by applying a rights-based approach grounded in evidence and best practice.

Everyone in this country agrees that communities should be healthy, safe and cohesive and that children should have every opportunity to do well in life. Youth crime happens when kids don't have opportunities and support. Disadvantaged communities suffer the most, and right now people are struggling out there. Let's be very clear. Governments are responsible for this crisis. Governments have neglected communities and children. They've failed to make sure people have access to basic health and mental health services; safe, affordable housing; decent education; and youth support programs.

Governments are failing to meet the basic needs of children and are denying them basic human rights. But when the most vulnerable children commit offences, politicians, both Labor and the coalition, don't respond by addressing the underlying issues that government neglect has created—for example, poverty, trauma and undiagnosed disability. Instead, they respond by shamelessly stoking community fears about children, black children in particular, and then promising to solve the issues with tough-on-crime approaches—oh, but you'll just need to vote for them first, right? Rather than take responsibility and follow evidence-based approaches, the major parties take advantage of people's fear and knowingly destroy the lives of children, all in the pursuit of their own political power. It's despicable.

In prisons, children—we're talking about 10-year-olds here—are routinely subjected to isolation, abuse, sexual assault and the deprivation of food, sunlight and meaningful contact with other people. They are deprived of education, deprived of health and deprived of mental health care. Most of these kids have severe cognitive disabilities, and most are black kids. They aren't rehabilitated; they are deeply harmed. All that does is drive and worsen problems in communities. It entrenches the disadvantage and disconnect that children have experienced. It makes them more likely to offend in the future. Tough-on-crime approaches lock communities and children into an endless cycle of harm: offending, conflict and incarceration. We all lose.

Who's looking after our children in this country? It's certainly not the government. This government needs to listen to the many, many First Nations advocates and leaders, as well as to experts like the National Children's Commissioner. You need to start telling the truth and showing some leadership on this issue. You need to drive an evidence-based, coordinated cross-portfolio national approach to youth justice that addresses the leading causes of criminalisation: poverty, lack of access to a safe home, health and mental health problems, lack of enough food to eat, lack of clothing and lack of access to education. Communities and children desperately need new solutions to these problems. We don't need more of the same; we need approaches that actually work.

Let's be clear: the government is not doing what works. You're doing what is best for your next political campaign. You don't have the best interests of the children of this country in your approach. For the information of those who aren't aware, it is more cost effective and beneficial to communities to properly support these kids outside of prison. It costs $1 million for one year to hold a child in prison. Imagine what you could do in the community if, instead of funding for youth programs being cut right across this country, you had that kind of money. It's a shame on the Labor government and anyone else who wants to go tough on crime. (Time expired)

Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When children come into contact with the criminal justice system, we've already failed them. That's a fact. If they are in the system, then the main consideration must be their own safety and that of others, and that they do the work that gives them the greatest chance of not coming back. Proven diversionary programs and safety mechanisms are one part of the solution, but so, too, is addressing how they got there.

Senator Thorpe's motion calls for a UN based approach, which means both parents share responsibility for bringing up children and should always consider what is in the best interests of each child. If that's what Senator Thorpe means, then the coalition agrees. It should not be controversial for parents to share responsibility for bringing up a child where it is safe to do so. We can talk systems, fault and failures, but we also need to talk much more about parents and parenting.

We should also talk more about Commonwealth, state, territory and local government programs that exist to support children and are supposed to provide a safety net for them. Where that safety net fails, we must be courageous about fixing the gaps, and that means ending funding for feel-good programs without clinical efficacy, evidence or outcomes. Children rely on us to demand service delivery excellence, because it is the best and most effective way to change lives, and quickly. To do anything else robs children of their future.

Every one of Australia's five million children has the right to live and grow up healthy. Children have a right to be safe no matter where they are. There is no cultural, gender, economic or social excuse that is anywhere near plausible for violence. Children have a right to receive an education, but parents also have a responsibility to get them to school. Children have a right to be treated fairly and have a say about decisions affecting them. These concepts form the basis of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Australia is a signatory.

One in six Australian children live in poverty. The number of children in contact with child protection systems continues to rise for all children, and again Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are overrepresented. Early intervention and prevention take time but can have great effect. There must be levers to drive change for parents and to improve parenting. So many children in the justice system have parents who know the confines of police cells and prisons all too well, so the focus needs to also be on them. For too many children, money comes from welfare, as it did for their parents, so the focus needs to engage them in work where that is possible. I'm talking about parents, whoever and wherever they are, who are locked in gambling, alcohol, drug and welfare addiction getting access to clinically proven services where they need them, not just yarning circles or a program they can't even access for seven months. To change the trajectory for children, you must also change the trajectory for parents for sustainable change.

In this place, when you stand for nothing that demands anything different, nothing changes. Here's proof that announcement is not enough: what about the Albanese government spending $400 million on community safety in Central Australia but failing to intercept groups of young children making their way into town before they get into trouble? The night I was in Alice Springs, more than 500 windows were broken, but so much more than glass was shattered that night. Where are the taxpayer funded service providers whose job it is to divert those children, and where are the youth programs that exist to prevent them from getting into trouble in the first place? All levels of government should begin rejecting the paternalism, the narrative that does nothing for change. They all need good diversionary programs and safety mechanisms, not just for the community but for the children themselves.

Our laws must consider the safety of every individual, family and community and their property, and that means an expectation of the need to protect everyone from harm. That's because one child in contact with the criminal justice system is one too many, and we can do so much more to intercept them before they get there, to safeguard them in custody and to make sure they do not return. If that's what Senator Thorpe means by a rights based approach, then the coalition agrees, and every senator in this place should too.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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)

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The youth justice system in this country is in crisis. It's racially biased and it intentionally harms the young people who are caught up in it as well as their communities. It costs billions of dollars that could instead be invested in positive outcomes for young people.

I'm proud to say that last week the Senate supported the Greens' motion for a groundbreaking federal inquiry into Australia's youth justice system. Too many children, particularly First Nations children, are being locked up, their futures stolen. We've heard heartbreaking stories from across the country—of tragic deaths in Western Australian children's prisons; of overcrowded children's detention centres in the Northern Territory; of police cells in Queensland; and of places like the Ashley Youth Detention Centre in Tasmania, a youth jail that's still operating despite appalling abuses. It is clear that locking up kids is having devastating effects across this country.

This Senate inquiry, by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee, is looking into the big issues, like whether children's prisons are treating kids humanely and whether Australia is even close to living up to its international human rights obligations. The use of spit hoods, isolation and other torture-like tactics is unacceptable. For the first time, the need for strong, enforceable national standards to make sure every state and territory is living up to its obligations to protect kids will be the subject of a national inquiry.

But here's the thing: this isn't just for politicians to solve; this inquiry needs to hear from experts and the community, especially people with lived experience. We need your voice. The inquiry is calling for public submissions, and the deadline is 10 October of this year. This is your chance to speak up, whether you're a parent, a teacher or someone with firsthand lived experience of the system. Make sure your voice is heard.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to 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.

Fatima Payman (WA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A 10-year-old cannot vote, cannot drive and cannot even work, yet they can be held criminally responsible and imprisoned. This is a total inconsistency in the way young people are held responsible for their actions. Last month, the Allan Labor government abandoned their promise to raise the age of criminal responsibility. At the then Andrews government's re-election in 2022, their key slogan was that they were 'doing what's right'. What is right about this? We are talking about a child who should be in the playground at recess, eating an LCM bar. Instead, the government wants to put them behind bars. As soon as that decision is made, as soon as that child is put into that system, they are placed in a cycle of self-destruction and dependency on the prison system. Life in prison becomes normal to them. Early intervention steering kids towards a productive, fulfilling life, not locking them up as soon as possible, is needed to keep these kids out of prison.

We know that this issue is especially salient for our First Nations communities. The National Indigenous Times reported last year that Indigenous children were as much as 29 times as likely to be imprisoned as non-Indigenous kids. Not everyone is suffering, however. Private, often foreign, prison operators, some listed on the New York Stock Exchange, are raking in almost $10 billion in annual revenue as the government helps them recruit more lifelong clients to boost their profits and deliver bigger dividends for their shareholders.

It's time the government took a decisive stand on whether they plan to do the right thing for our kids by raising the age or to continue to contribute to the destruction of lives and communities under current policies.

Question agreed to.