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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (1 March) . . Page.. 457 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

administrations, although it is a difficult task. The biggest problem, the overwhelming problem, is to convince the people of the Northern Territory and Western Australia that this law is bad. That is the difficult task.

I believe the governments in the Northern Territory and Western Australia are not dominating an unwilling population. I believe they have the general, but not total, support of large sections of their community. The law may be changed. There may be pressure to have it changed. But the more important task is to convince those populations that the law is bad and is working against Aborigines and against reconciliation.

It is unfortunate that the governments in those jurisdictions have not provided the leadership that is necessary. It shows us that there is so much more to be done in terms of reconciliation. Efforts in that area should be accelerated, not, as the Prime Minister has announced recently, put on the backburner. Delay can only cause further difficulty and further alienation.

Mr Humphries went to a small amount of trouble to try to point to some division in Labor across Australia about the way we should proceed in this case. I say to Mr Humphries, thank heavens there are some Liberals in the Federal Parliament who appear to be very strong in telling their recalcitrant Prime Minister that he should change their attitude. Thank heavens there are some Liberals in the national parliament and across Australia who understand the significance of this issue. I hope they can convince the Prime Minister that he should change his view.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education) (3.58): Mr Speaker, I am a bit late to join in this debate. Mrs Carnell just gave me some documents from the Northern Territory which are probably worth while tabling. What concerns me the most is that a young person has died in custody - after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. I wonder whether so much attention would have been given to young Johnno's case had he been sentenced by some law other than mandatory sentencing. That in itself is a question that needs to be asked.

The people of the Territory have been lucky in having only a small number of people die in custody. We have had three deaths - two in the Remand Centre and one in Quamby. That is three too many. I hope that the coronial inquest into young Johnno's death in the Northern Territory is as thorough and comes up with as many good outcomes as that of the coronial inquest into the Remand Centre deaths and the Quamby death.

I do not profess to know a huge amount about mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. The law applies to property offences. I will table the documents from the Attorney-General's office. I note from the documents that people have to be over 15 and 16. I also note from the documents that a person does not necessarily go straight to gaol. Perhaps if those documents were tabled, that would assist this debate.

For relatively minor crimes, I do not favour mandatory sentencing. I think it would be more appropriate for much more serious crime, such as armed robbery. I listened with great interest to the contribution of Mr Wood and, in particular, his comment that the

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