Page 3432 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 September 2019
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For the sake of everyone involved, it is crucial that our youth detention facility operates as it should. I note that the interim report mentions the need for further discussion on the adequacy of therapeutic support available in the centre. I welcome that discussion. There is simply no point in locking our young people up without providing them with the best therapeutic support.
Best practice from around the world makes it clear what can be accomplished by doing things right. I therefore look forward to reading Mr Muir’s final report in November and carefully considering the recommendations that he will include. I expect that those recommendations will be accepted and implemented. I also look forward to reviewing the data in this latest headline indicators report.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (10.56): I thank the minister for her statement and I thank her and Mr Muir for the quickness of the turnaround on this. I think this is very reassuring both to the Assembly and the Canberra public, and probably most of all to the family and friends of the young people and staff who were involved in it. It must have been very stressful for all concerned.
I acknowledge that obviously there are further investigations going on. I look forward to hearing more about these in the future. Some of the information that has come out has been very reassuring. There were 11 staff at the centre on 26 August and 15 young people in custody, which would appear to be an adequate ratio of staff to young people at the centre.
It is also very reassuring that Mr Muir did not find any significant failing in the systems of behaviour management, although he did stress the need for consistency. I am pleased that Mr Muir has identified the need for further discussion on the adequacy of therapeutic care, as issues of trauma, abandonment and neglect are often at the core of why young people have ended up in Bimberi for whatever sort of offending behaviour.
We all know too well the links between the youth justice system and the possible trajectory into the adult justice system. I believe that it is very important that we address the therapeutic needs of the young people in this context. Once young people get involved in the out of home care system, and even more Bimberi, it often is the beginning of an unfortunate life trajectory. I think it is really important that we do the best we can with the young people in Bimberi to ensure that their life trajectory becomes more positive than it would have been otherwise. That has to be the major aim of Bimberi.
Mr Muir has identified areas for improvement. This is very good. One other thing that I think it is worth coming back to is the need to increase the age of criminal responsibility. This is something the Human Rights Commission, and specifically the Commissioner for Children and Young People, has been recommending for some time. I understand that there has been an intention for the ACT government to do some work on this subject, but if this is happening all I can say is that to date it clearly has not surfaced in any public fashion. I urge the ACT government to get on with it, to
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