Page 3641 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 1 November 2023
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While raising the age, the bill establishes the therapeutic support panel for children and young people, introducing a new intensive therapy order and establishing minimum standards for intensive therapy places to be used only as a last resort. The panel created under section 501B will ensure a framework to support lowering the MACR by providing referred children or young persons with appropriate support services. The panel will comprise 10 to 12 members, all of whom will possess expertise, qualifications and knowledge in relevant fields. The new therapeutic correction order, a community-based sentencing option, will support rehabilitation, where applicable, for children under 18.
While the Canberra Liberals support raising the MACR to 12, for reasons I will go into, we do not support raising it to 14. As members would be aware, the scrutiny of bills committee gave a report on the bill and on subsequent government amendments, and highlighted a few things that I think are worth noting.
Firstly, there was a committee report, with a dissenting report from me and with Mr Braddock providing additional comments. Mr Braddock had concerns directed to the legal inconsistency of the exemptions or carve-outs. He made the point that if a 13-year-old has the mental capacity to be criminally liable for a serious crime, how is it that they do not have the mental capacity to be criminally liable for a lesser crime? The logic is just not there.
I made this recommendation in my report:
… two years following raising the age of criminal responsibility to 12 and implementing the therapeutic support regime, the ACT Government implement an independent review of the impact of these changes, and include in such a review an investigation into whether the minimum age of criminal responsibility should be raised further.
That was my single recommendation, and I will speak on that in this debate.
I also made the point that it does seem inconsistent, from a logical and legal point of view, for a 13-year-old to be criminally liable for certain serious offences but not criminally liable for less serious offences. The logic and the legality do not stack up. Again, as usual, I thank the department for a briefing that I had on the original bill, noting that we have amendments to be provided by Mr Braddock and the Attorney-General later this morning.
As mentioned, Mr Braddock has, subsequent to that committee report, moved amendments to introduce a sunset clause on the carve-outs so that, while the minimum age of criminal responsibility is raised to 14 in 2025, those carve-out exemptions—the three serious offences, where a 13-year-old, for example, could be found criminally liable—will disappear by 2030.
As we are aware, the government circulated to members yesterday afternoon 21 amendments to its own bill that were brought to the attention of the scrutiny committee last month—highlighting, perhaps, some incomplete drafting of their first bill, and covering up gaps and lapses in the drafting of the original bill. The proposed amendments from the government—in fact, from the Greens Attorney-General—
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