Page 3733 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 November 2022

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this debate. Anything less is a virtue-signalling, box-ticking exercise by a lazy, entitled government that is, at its heart, incapable of genuine reform for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.

I therefore urge the members of this Assembly to join me and the Canberra Liberals today in calling on the ACT government to recommit fully to the reforms necessary to improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within the territory’s child protection and criminal justice systems, as well as in other important areas. I therefore move an amendment to Dr Paterson’s motion which has been circulated. I move:

Omit all text after “notes that”, substitute:

“(a) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the traditional owners of this country, and the ACT Legislative Assembly pays respect to their ongoing spiritual and cultural connections with it;

(b) the latest data available in the Closing the Gap Information Repository (updated 2022) continue to highlight significant discrepancies between nonIndigenous and First Nations people, with the ACT showing no improvement in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are born healthy and strong, no improvement in the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people in the child protection system, and no improvement in the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults in the criminal justice system;

(i) the crude and age-standardised imprisonment rate ratio between Indigenous and non-Indigenous males is higher in the ACT than in any other Australian jurisdiction;

(ii) the crude imprisonment rate ratio for Indigenous females is both the highest in Australia and more than double the national average;

(iii) over the past decade, the incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people has increased faster in the ACT than in any other Australian jurisdiction, with admissions increasing by an average of 5.7 percent annually;

(iv) the most recent ‘Prisoners in Australia’ report indicates that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander recidivism rate in the ACT is 94 percent, the highest of any Australian jurisdiction; and

(v) despite the above, the ACT Government has to this point not agreed to establish an independent board of inquiry into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander engagement with the criminal justice system, as unanimously and repeatedly requested by a roundtable of Indigenous community leaders;

(d) regarding overrepresentation in the child protection system:

(i) it has now been four years and five months since the Our Booris, Our Way Steering Committee presented its first recommendations to the·ACT Government with the intention that they be urgently implemented, and almost three years since the final report with all recommendations was handed down;

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