Page 4098 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 22 October 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I support the amending Bill, as does the Rally. I do not support the foreshadowed amendment by Mr Stefaniak to commit children who cannot pay a fine to an institution. It was this house, including Mr Stefaniak, that gave support to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child last year, article 37(b) of which says:
No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.
Mr Stefaniak's proposal meets neither the last resort criterion nor the shortest appropriate period of time criterion because going to gaol in default, in my experience, is usually a direct variable of the sum in issue, subject to some limits. In this case it is not exceeding 40 days.
I am fairly familiar with Quamby. It is near where I live and, over the years when I was a solicitor, I would get called over there occasionally to help out. In fact, the cells there are worse than those at Belconnen. They are unpainted brick rooms in the older section. I am surprised that Mr Stefaniak would be prepared to have a weekend away there; I would not be. We have work to do in that regard. But the overriding thing is that I clearly recall the fact that we had an occupancy rate of 4.5 children per night and 38 staff. And the monstrous cost of keeping a 38-staff shift for four or five children, which probably still persists, would probably mean that the costs of recovering the fine by locking the kids up would be out of all proportion, because of those extra institutionalised costs that we may need.
There are many kids, as Mr Stefaniak rightly says, who are not paying their fines. It is becoming a joke, as he rightly says. The kids walk away and they are getting to know that we cannot enforce their fines. I do not believe that the answer is to lock them up. The answer lies in doing more work to section 57, I think, of the parent Act - Mr Duby has it - which deals with work attendance orders. Work attendance orders are not the exact answer either. Attendance has got down to getting off at the bus stop at the top of Goyder Street, walking across Hindmarsh Drive and attending the re-education classes there. They are well and good; but we should be bringing community service order activity into the juvenile world, subject to certain limits.
The kids should be made to scrub their graffiti off, subject to certain limits. The children should be made to pick up their broken glass. There should be specific orders requiring them to make restitution in a form that does not offend the Convention on the Rights of the Child, that does not demean them or create inhuman processes, and
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .