Page 4379 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 1993
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"Let us spend lots of money to establish the creative graffiti and vandalism unit" side of the Liberals, we now move to the other side of the Liberals - it takes about 30 seconds - that says, "We must be punitive. We must be tough, and if children vandalise a school we should sell up their parents' house and throw them into the streets so that they get the message".
Madam Speaker, the principle of the criminal law in most places is that a person is responsible for their own acts. A young person who vandalises a school is held responsible for their acts, is brought into the criminal justice system, is brought before the Children's Court and, if found guilty, is convicted, and a range of penalties can be imposed. As I said earlier, we have recently introduced some creative forms of penalty through the community service order scheme under which we are actually imposing upon young people who have engaged in acts of vandalism - - -
Mrs Carnell: Ha, ha!
MR CONNOLLY: Chuckle, chuckle. It is all a joke. That is the Liberal Party's view of public administration generally - chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. Madam Speaker, this is a very innovative scheme that this Government has introduced. As far as I know, it has not been trialled elsewhere in Australia. We are taking young people who have been convicted of offences such as vandalism, damaging schools - the sort of thing that the Liberals are always, shock, horror, screaming about - and we have them doing community service orders to repair vandalism and damage in the community. That is an innovative and positive contribution to the community, one would think.
Mrs Carnell: Yes, we agreed with that.
MR CONNOLLY: The Liberals in fact are agreeing with that. That is some encouragement. That is the way to deal with these sorts of problems. Some of the young people who are getting into the criminal justice system for this type of behaviour end up going through some of the fairly complex new structures that we are creating to deal with this problem of uncontrollable, violent or persistently offending youth. As members would be aware, in the last community services budget we created the adolescent day centre, which is set up in an old preschool in the inner north. That is a unit which is taking people who have been identified through the education system as having persistent anti-social, uncontrollable behaviour. A professional would wince at that word, but it is that sort of repeated behaviour problem. We are devoting resources, by way of community workers, by way of health and related professionals, to addressing those behaviour problems in young people.
The way to deal with an acknowledged problem of vandalism against public property such as schools - and this was the emphasis of Mr Cornwell's speech and has been the emphasis in Mr Cornwell's press releases on this issue - is to make those young people responsible for their actions. That is the purpose of the criminal justice system. Our innovation in getting those kids and having them out there scrubbing off graffiti perhaps is the most symbolic way of making them accountable for their actions, because it is not a particularly pleasant task to be out there scrubbing off graffiti and it brings home to young people who have offended the anti-social nature of their actions. We have ranges of other penalties, but we also have ranges of support mechanisms, through the adolescent day care unit, to deal with these people who have behavioural problems.
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