Page 1403 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2006
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We are talking here about people of some concern, not necessarily about terrorists or people in relation to whom we do not even have the information to lay a charge. We have the double whammy with this proposal, which has been accepted far too blithely around Australia and which is the position of the Liberal Party in this place, and it is that, in addition to the significant issue of detaining somebody against whom you have no evidence on which to base a charge, there is also the issue of detaining children. This brings into play another international convention.
It was interesting to hear the shadow attorney describe the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is the basis of the objection to detaining children, as a warped idea. Those were his words. He says that those that support the notion that, in response to our obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, you not detain children in these circumstances are expressing a warped idea.
I do not think it is a warped idea for us as a community to draw a line in relation to those that we will subject to preventative detention in circumstances where we do not have any evidence that they have committed, or propose to commit, a crime. Mr Stefaniak says, “Let us make it 18, because we know that 16 and 17-year-olds get up to all sorts of criminality.” So do 15-year-olds. But, to extend the argument, if we drop the line from 18 to 16, why not drop it to 15 or 14? Why not abandon any limitation? If terrorists are going to recruit and use 16-year-olds because the law says that people under 18 cannot be preventatively detained, then those very same terrorists will surely now target 15-year-olds.
Mr Stefaniak: They already do.
MR STANHOPE: They target 16 and 17-year-olds, but in this magical world of the Liberals they do not target 15-year-olds.
Mr Stefaniak: The rest of the country, Jon. You are the odd man out here.
MR STANHOPE: They do not target 15-year-olds.
Mr Stefaniak: The magical world of New South Wales and Labor in Queensland.
MR STANHOPE: So, according to the Liberal Party’s equation of those likely to commit terrorist offences or be recruited by terrorists, we would take out 16 and 17-year-olds, but include 15-year-olds and expose them to these terrorists who go around recruiting children for their criminal activities. Why stop at 16? Let us go to 14. Let us go back to 12, which is the age of criminal intent. We know that 12-year-olds have the capacity to commit the most heinous crimes. We see the saddest examples of 12-year-old murderers. But, no, let us stop it at 16. It is a nonsense!
There is an accepted national position in relation to the rights of the child. A child is defined as somebody under the age of 18 years. We have signed the international Convention on the Rights of the Child. We, as a community and as a society, have devoted ourselves most particularly to protecting children. It is at the heart of most of the things we do. Yet, as soon as the spectre of terrorism is raised, the Liberal Party is
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