Page 2439 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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I am very committed to doing all I can with the improvements within youth justice, and these papers and these initiatives are just the beginning of that.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.23): I welcome the opportunity to highlight one of the areas where the Canberra Liberals have been most vigilant over the last few years. The work that has been done in youth justice is a testament to the work that has been done by the Canberra Liberals in highlighting the failures of the Stanhope and now the Gallagher government.
It is quite interesting today to find what is in the Canberra Times at least—although not to the same extent in this statement; I think it has been downplayed a bit in the course of the day. The Canberra Times reported that the centrepiece of these reforms would be the introduction of a parole system for young offenders. I notice that it now gets one paragraph mentioned in the penultimate paragraph of the minister’s statement.
I think that is because the Canberra Liberals have again pointed out the failures of successive Labor governments since 2001 in this area. I draw attention to the extensive debate and the extensive commentary that was given by the Canberra Liberals, particularly Mr Seselja, over the passage of the children and young people’s legislation back in 2008. Mr Seselja, on behalf of the Canberra Liberals, spoke at length about the problems in the children and young people legislation because there was no parole system. The old children and young people legislation had a licence system. There were views that, because we were now a human rights compliant jurisdiction, that was not an appropriate system, because the system of licences for remission were issued by the head of the office, the territory parent, and as a result that was perhaps not the right system.
Instead of fixing that system, they threw it out. It is interesting to quote some of the things that Mr Seselja said back in July 2008 on this matter. He said:
This is a curious human rights outcome, for the previous statutory remission system offered a young offender showing signs of early rehabilitation the prospect of early release, and is beyond the pale because of a mixture of judicial and administrative functions. Rather than that, the human rights conscious Stanhope government would prefer locking them up without the prospect of early release. Yet again, there is a contradiction between the government’s stated agenda and the actual outcome in this case. It does seem scandalous that a young offender can be incarcerated for a defined period without hope of release on licence. Such a move would positively discourage good behaviour whilst in detention and, again, is a very real concern now evidenced by this bill.
Mr Seselja went on to discuss the elements of the justification for this found in the explanatory statement to the bill at the time. He went on to say:
In contrast, the explanatory statement says the government has decided … not to construct a parole system for young offenders in substitute for the existing statutory remission system because:
The effect of combining a sentence of imprisonment and a good behaviour order with a supervision condition meets the rehabilitative goal of supervising
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