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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (1 March) . . Page.. 456 ..

MR WOOD (3.51): The Assembly should make the strongest protest about the mandatory sentencing legislation of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. It is bad legislation; it is wrong legislation. We are right to oppose it and to do so strongly. It has been said in this chamber that the law is discriminatory. Because of the circumstances that apply in certain areas, perhaps across Australia, by nature the people who come under the impact of this law are overwhelmingly Aboriginal.

I recall one occasion in the Northern Territory when a son of a member or a son of a Cabinet Minister of the Northern Territory Assembly was arrested and gaoled because of this law. But, for the most part, almost all the people who are brought under this law and who suffer because of it are Aboriginal. Mr Stanhope outlined the background to that. They are the poor in the community. Laws always seem to impact upon the poor in the community, never the rich. So it is a discriminatory law.

Some people believe this law is an answer to the problem. That is simply not the case. Indeed, it makes the problem worse. This heavy-handed approach does not solve the problem. A well-known and often used phrase is: "Let's attend to the causes of crime". This legislation does nothing to attend to the causes of the crime. It is a useful phrase to use. The years have demonstrated that heavy-handed approaches like this simply do not attend to the problem. Governments go out and say to the people, "We're fixing the problem", but they are not. They are in fact exacerbating the problem.

For petty crime - very petty crime, as we have seen instanced recently - it is much more appropriate for local penalties to be enforced by local people who are understood by those who have committed the offence. At the moment I am sure the law is confusing for the people who are punished by it. We should resist those measures of other places because they are high risk. The report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, from which we all learnt a vast amount, said, "If you take this sort of action, it will produce deaths in custody". This is well known and yet it is happening. There have been more deaths in custody, and along with that comes further alienation by one sector of the community.

These laws have brought discredit to Australia and I think that is unfortunate. But it is also a good thing. It has broader benefits, and let us acknowledge that. The UN is interested; other nations are interested. It has an international focus now. That seems to be the necessary impetus for something to occur. While we may be humiliated in some respects by international focus, I think it is necessary to bring some action.

I think there is a greater concern behind this legislation. The United Nations, nations separate from the United Nations umbrella and people around Australia do not have to convince just the Northern Territory and the Western Australian governments that this law is wrong. That task can possibly be accomplished or forced upon those two

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