Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (1 March) . . Page.. 429 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

that we have to stand up in parliaments around Australia and continually repeat the extent of the poverty and social marginalisation suffered by indigenous people in this country.

Indigenous people are the poorest, on all indicators. Indigenous people are the poorest, the least healthy, the least employed, the worst housed and the most imprisoned Australians. The strategy on addressing disadvantage will look to practical ways of reversing these deplorable results. A start can be made by overturning the mandatory sentencing regimes of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The ACT Government and all members of our Assembly support reconciliation. Most, I am sure, oppose mandatory sentencing.

As Ms Tucker has pointed out in her motion, for Mrs Carnell and the Government in their submission to the Senate inquiry the overriding concern was Commonwealth intervention in the affairs of the States and Territories. In the Government's submission to the Senate committee examining mandatory sentencing of juvenile offenders the Government said:

I agree with Mrs Carnell in that respect. Where we differ, however, is that I believe mandatory sentencing and its discriminatory impact on Aboriginal people provide an extreme, urgent and compelling case in the sense proposed in the Government's submission. (Extension of time granted)

Unless Western Australia and the Northern Territory are persuaded to change their laws by the weight of evidence presented to the Senate inquiry into mandatory sentencing, unless they are persuaded by the intervention of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, unless they are persuaded by the enormous outpouring of concern and condemnation from all right-thinking people throughout this nation, then the Labor Party believes that the Commonwealth will have no option but to intervene.

In the context of Ms Tucker's motion, the Labor Party supports her view that this Government, this parliament, in its submission to that inquiry should have seriously addressed the issue of mandatory sentencing. It was an inquiry into the mandatory sentencing of juveniles, not an inquiry into states rights versus human rights. That is the obvious outcome and the implication of the issue insofar as the public debate has gone, but it was an inquiry into mandatory sentencing of juveniles.

In the Labor Party's belief, the Government should have seriously addressed that issue. It should have engaged in the debate about how these laws are simply unacceptable on any notion of human rights or individual liberties, justice or equity or even in relation to the genuineness of our commitment to reconciliation.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .