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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (1 March) . . Page.. 427 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

extent to which there is difference between superior courts on this question, it is essentially over the issue of whether rehabilitation is the primary consideration or merely an important consideration. What the courts agree on is that mandatory sentencing contradicts that position because it places incapacitation - that is, imprisonment, getting people off the streets - as the primary consideration and prevents the court from taking into account any other sentencing objectives in relation to rehabilitation or returning a person to the community. Ms Tucker, in her detailed speech, touched on those issues, and I will not quote the examples she did.

More importantly, I oppose mandatory sentencing because of its impact on the poor and disadvantaged in our society and, in Australia, particularly its impact on indigenous people. Mandatory sentencing requirements apply to minor property offences, the very offences most likely to be committed by those who have been marginalised in our society and by our society. It is the disadvantaged in our community who suffer disproportionately as a result of these penalties.

As we all know, indigenous people have a disproportionate contact with the justice system. Indigenous young people are most likely to be arrested for public order offences; they are less likely to be cautioned by police and more likely to be charged with a criminal offence; they are more likely to be arrested than given a summons. This means young indigenous people are more likely to appear in court and are therefore more likely to have a record and to come into the scope of the mandatory sentencing regime.

For those offences covered by mandatory sentencing, the overwhelming majority, 70 per cent, of adults and juveniles appearing before the Northern Territory courts are Aboriginal. It is ironic, and I guess we can be a little bit cynical about it, that not all property offences are subject to mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory. Fraud and embezzlement are excluded. Fraud and embezzlement are almost exclusively property offences committed by non-indigenous people.

Across Australia young indigenous people are 25 times more likely to be in detention than are non-indigenous people. In the Northern Territory the rate is 32 times greater and in Western Australia is it 38 times greater. These are shameful figures, and mandatory sentencing only makes them worse. A recent report in the Northern Territory claimed that since the introduction of mandatory sentencing the number of juveniles gaoled in the Territory had increased by 145 per cent. Almost all of them were Aboriginal. The report also found that there had been no reduction in crime or in property offences.

What are the offences for which these people are being imprisoned? Many examples have been reported in the press and in submissions to the Senate inquiry. I take the opportunity to refer to some of those mentioned in the ATSIC submission. A 22-year-old Aboriginal woman was sentenced to 14 days' gaol for stealing a can of beer. She was employed and had no prior convictions. In July 1998 a 13-year-old girl was sentenced to 21 days' detention at the Don Dale Centre in Darwin for stealing and for breaching previous court orders. She had previously been convicted of stealing food. She was incarcerated 1,500 kilometres from her community.

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