Page 2061 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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Omit paragraph (3)(a), substitute:
“(a) refrain from proceeding unilaterally with any decision to raise the age of criminal responsibility before the Council of Attorneys-General has reached its conclusions;”.
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Children, Youth and Families and Minister for Health) (11.28): I am pleased to support the Attorney-General’s amendment to this important motion, and I thank Mr Rattenbury for bringing this motion to the Assembly. I also note that Labor members in this place will not be supporting Mr Hanson’s amendment to Mr Ramsay’s proposed amendment. In noting that, I would say that, for all Mr Hanson’s fine words in terms of supporting, in theory, raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years, his amendment removes the one clause in Mr Ramsay’s amendment that calls on the ACT government to support raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years of age.
We will not be supporting the removal of that. That is an important call. Mr Ramsay spoke about all of the other issues that need to be considered in that context, if we were to determine that moving unilaterally was an appropriate thing to do in the context of understanding, as we all agree, that a national approach is absolutely preferred.
As I have reported to this place many times, the blueprint for youth justice 2012-22—and I give credit to my colleague Minister Gentleman for delivering that when he was the relevant minister—has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of young people coming into contact with the territory’s youth justice system. This is a great outcome, but we also know that there is more to do.
While the amendment notes, as Mr Hanson highlighted, the very low numbers of young people in detention—and this speaks to our commitment to diversion of young people from a detention response and using the detention response as a last resort—it is also problematic and damaging to be bumping up against the justice system. Going to court and being sentenced to community orders still has an impact on young people, let alone being detained on remand.
Again, we do have very low numbers of young people under the age of 12 being detained, even on remand, and that is excellent. That is an excellent reflection of our community and our system, but it is not a reason that we should not seek to move that number to zero and find other ways to support young people, keep them safe and address their offending behaviour.
We have also spoken many times in this place about the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the justice system. This is an issue for all jurisdictions. Again, we have seen a decrease in the ACT in the youth justice sector since the blueprint for youth justice in the ACT was implemented. However, we are also committed to continuing to address what remains a disproportionate representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young peoples in all stages of the youth justice system.
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