Page 2062 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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The ACT government and ACT Labor are committed to a justice reinvestment agenda that empowers young people, their families and their community, rather than a punitive or reactionary approach that only harms young people and increases the cost to the taxpayer, at the end of the day.
As the attorney noted in his amendment, the ACT government has invested in programs to support at-risk young people and their families, including Yarrabi Bamirr, functional family therapy, the after-hours crisis and bail service, and the safe and connected youth project.
With respect to the intensive diversion program, the other day I had a constituent write to me about her son’s experience with intensive diversion and what an enormous impact that that PCYC program has had on her son. It was really good to hear that we are already investing in these programs that are diverting young people from the youth justice system. Of course, the Muliyan flexible education program, which is a relatively new part of our public education system, provides really important support for young people who are disengaging from mainstream education.
These programs are all a demonstration of how serious we are about providing a therapeutic response for young people who brush up against or become involved in the youth justice system. As Minister Rattenbury has said, Canberra’s children should be supported to stay safe in their family, community and culture. That is exactly what our fundamental aim is, across the integrated child protection and youth justice system. It was a first in Australia to integrate those into a single act and a single service.
As I and others have noted, thankfully, there are small numbers of young people involved in the youth justice system. This gives us the opportunity to provide those wraparound services. Two examples that I have mentioned, but I will touch on them again, are the safe and connected youth project and functional family therapy, which work with a young person’s family and kin to explore why young people might be displaying challenging and offending behaviours, and work with the whole family to address that and keep them out of the statutory services, including youth justice, and prevent and limit further trauma. Detention should always be considered as an absolute last resort for young people. Raising the age of criminal responsibility will be another step in building our diversionary and therapeutic youth justice system.
To those who have seen the moving and inspiring documentary In My Blood it Runs—those who have not should do so, as it is moving and inspiring—I would like to say that the ACT is a very different place from the one we see in that film, and the numbers say that this is so. We also know that the reality for too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families is an experience of institutional and systemic racism, a lack of trust in police and other authorities, and the ongoing impact of past policies and practices that manifest in intergenerational trauma, and all that that implies for the physiological and psychological impacts on grandparents, parents and their children.
We can absolutely do more. I am pleased to support the attorney’s amendment today, which puts the ACT on a path to raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility, based on evidence and detailed policy work that is still required. This is important to
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