Page 534 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 21 February 2012
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which we have young people in detention is extraordinarily high and is in many cases the highest rate in the country. It is particularly the case with Indigenous young people; given the small proportion of Indigenous people in our population, the representation of Indigenous people in the youth justice system is a disgrace.
There are many things that need to be done to address ways to best divert young people out of the youth justice system and to ensure that they do not get there in the first place. Much of the responsibility for this falls in many ways into the minister’s portfolio, and action should start at the youngest possible age. The minister is keen to say that the first five years of a child’s life last their whole life, or words to that effect; she has said it repeatedly. This is perhaps where we should be first talking about intervention.
We also see from the ROGS data that there has been a substantial and continuing decline in the amount of money provided to targeted family assistance for families at risk. Families at risk are much more likely to have their children end up in the youth justice system. But the ACT government is spending a paltry $20 per child on integrated at-risk programs.
All of these things go towards a fundamental failing by the ACT government in the area of youth justice. Following considerable pressure from the opposition and the crossbench, we have seen some programs which, if appropriately implemented and appropriately resourced and supported, may provide a welcome turnaround in our poor performance in the area of youth justice. But there is still a long way to go. As with most things in this minister’s portfolio, we will have to see considerable work from this minister, and the members of the crossbench and the opposition will have to be vigilant to ensure that this minister is doing more than providing lip-service.
The Labor government says that the implementation of the report of the Human Rights Commission into the youth justice system will take some 10 years to complete. This is underscored by the 224 recommendations of the inquiry of the Human Rights Commission into the youth justice system. That in itself—224 recommendations—is a demonstration of the depth of the failure of the youth justice system and the depth of the failure for the young people who come into contact with the youth justice system.
When you look at the population of young people in the ACT, those people who come into contact with the youth justice system are relatively few. We are a small and compact jurisdiction and we should not have a dysfunctional youth justice system. It should be the gold standard. It should be the place where people come to admire our successes. That is not the case now in the current system. The work of this minister and this government to turn this around is important and it will take a long time. In fact I can confidently say that we will not see the improvement in the youth justice system that the people of the ACT should be demanding in the life of this government. It will be successive governments—a Seselja Liberal government—who will actually have the capacity and the will to turn around the youth justice system, to prevent young people from entering the system, to divert those young offenders so that they do not reoffend and they do not end up in the adult prison system.
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