Page 2480 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 31 July 2019
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Significantly, Magistrates Bowles’s report includes evidence that compulsory treatment, if carried out correctly, can be effective. She quotes one Swedish expert:
For a long time, we considered treatment had to be voluntary … but here, they studied groups, one mandatory and the other voluntary[,] and they couldn’t see any difference.
The report also addresses human rights concerns.
After 17 years of working with young people in the Children’s Court of Victoria, Magistrate Bowles had reached the conclusion that what we are doing in Australia, in too many cases, is not working. She has spent the past five years researching and proposing an alternative model. It is worth examining her findings. That is the purpose of my motion, to call upon this government to consider this and any other serious options.
The informed conversation in Australia has moved on considerably from the 2007 statement that compulsory treatment of young people does not work. But here we are. It is a new day, with new research and new results.
I note that one year after Magistrate Bowles released her report, a steering committee was established in Victoria to undertake further development of her model. This committee comprises 25 professionals who have multidisciplinary experience in the field, including the CEOs of the Youth Support Advocacy Service, Windana and Odyssey House; senior medical/addiction specialists from St Vincent’s Hospital; the Director of the Children’s Court clinic; alcohol and other drug clinical specialists; clinical and forensic psychiatrists; the community service agency sector; education or training; lawyers; and advocacy groups.
This issue has gained traction in Victoria such that last year Premier Daniel Andrews told both SBS and ABC that his Labor government was looking into the matter and would have more to say in the future. This is precisely what my motion is all about. It is calling on the Labor government to take this seriously and look into it.
The ACT drug strategy action plan commits this government to providing people with a range of treatment options. A number of Canberra families, sick with worry over their children, were asking that one of these options be compulsory therapeutic treatment of young people when all other options fail. Considering the evolving nature of the national conversation on this issue, this is not an inappropriate request. The drug strategy action plan also commits this government to “drawing on specialist sector knowledge to identify options to expand alcohol and other drug services to meet the needs of priority populations”, including young people.
This motion calls upon the government to honour the families that have spoken to me, as well as to acknowledge the work of Magistrate Bowles and others, both in Victoria and also overseas, by making compulsory therapeutic treatment part of the expert consultations that they are already engaging in, to report their findings to the Assembly by the last sitting day of this calendar year and to include these findings in the territory’s drug strategy action plan.
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