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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1699 ..
MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (5.07): Mr Speaker, I move:
That this Assembly reaffirms its support for the ongoing reconciliation process between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and requests the Chief Minister to write to the Prime Minister notifying him that the Assembly:
(1) supports federal intervention to overturn mandatory sentencing laws in the Northern Territory and Western Australia;
(2) rejects the references in his Government's submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee inquiry into the stolen generation that deny the existence of a stolen generation of indigenous Australians; and
(3) supports the adoption of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation's Declaration Towards Reconciliation.
Mr Speaker, almost 10 years of work by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation will culminate on the weekend with Corroboree 2000. I find it extremely ironic that as some barriers to reconciliation are being torn down new ones are still being built. Friday of this week is National Sorry Day, but in some states and territories of Australia there are still governments creating and implementing policies for all of us and for future generations to be sorry for.
On several occasions this Assembly has acknowledged the inherent injustice of mandatory sentencing regimes, which invariably impact negatively on disadvantaged sectors of society. Australia's indigenous people in particular are undoubtedly suffering as a result of the implementation of mandatory sentencing in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Perhaps we should not be so surprised and outraged that some of our interstate colleagues have chosen to adopt such laws. Pursuing populist but discriminatory responses to societal problems is just as attractive to some modern-day politicians as it has been throughout history.
In modern-day Australia a major problem is undoubtedly property crime. In America, the tradition of identifying scapegoats for the problems facing society has continued from the reported Salem witch-hunts of early puritanical America, through the McCarthy era and into the 21st century. After many years of pursuing this sort of tradition, the Americans have managed to capture the sentiment of that in legislation-mandatory sentencing legislation. Through mandatory sentencing regimes the Americans have efficiently targeted minority groups to hold them responsible for nearly every possible form of social ill. It is a system that is popular with the more conservative and less tolerant, and it is a system that I am concerned is now being embraced in Australia.
In studying the impact that mandatory sentencing has had on the American people, I came across an editorial by Adam J. Smith, associate director of America's Drug Reform Coordination Network. It gave a commentary on the findings of a recent report by the American Justice Policy Institute which found that by the middle of this year America's prison population was due to reach two million. The report found that more than half of those people would be non-violent offenders.
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