Ms ROSOL (Bass) – I want to speak this afternoon on broken promises to the young people of Tasmania. We have heard a lot in the last few weeks about what the Premier says about the future of young people in Tasmania and how wonderful the stadium is going to be for them. At the same time as he is talking about some supposed benefits for some young people in Tasmania, he is quite selective in thinking about the young people of Tasmania, because we also have many young people in Tasmania who are in a difficult situation. The government has made promises to them, and those promises have not been fulfilled.
Back in September 2021, after decades of calls for the closure of Ashley Youth Detention Centre and after a report that the government received in 2016 calling for the closure of Ashley Youth Detention Centre, the then‑premier, Mr Gutwein, announced that the government would close Ashley Youth Detention Centre. Here we are close to halfway through 2025 and we are still no closer, it would seem, to the closure of Ashley Youth Detention Centre.
The commission of inquiry was happening at the time that the premier made his announcement in 2021. The commission of inquiry highlighted how unsafe Ashley Youth Detention Centre was for the young people of Tasmania. There were human rights breaches happening in there. There were calls and a strong recommendation from the commission of inquiry report for the closure of Ashley Youth Detention Centre as soon as possible. The government responded by saying that they would close Ashley Youth Detention Centre in phase two of their responses to the commission of inquiry, and so by 2026 Ashley Youth Detention Centre would be closed. We now know that that is not going to happen. We saw last year that the DECYP annual report revealed that it would be at least until the end of 2027 before Ashley Youth Detention Centre could possibly be closed.
The government yesterday released its master plan for the new Tasmanian youth facility. It makes it clear that the new facility cannot be completed until the end of 2027, which means that Ashley Youth Detention Centre is likely to be open until 2028.
We know that children are safer in community settings than within detention facilities. We know that we need to be closing Ashley Youth Detention Centre to ensure young people’s safety. We know that we need to be moving to use more diversion practices and have more diversion opportunities available for young people. We know that we need to have alternative bail facilities available for young people in Tasmania. We know that we need to be doing more to care for young people and their families and to ensure that universal supports are in place for them.
That is how we prevent young people becoming caught up in crime. We know that if we lock young people up in youth detention centres, this contributes to recidivism. It contributes to them having an ongoing interaction with youth justice, and as adults having interactions with the justice system and ending up in prisons.
We need to be doing so much more for the young people of Tasmania. It is not enough to say that we will eventually close Ashley Youth Detention Centre. We need to get on it and do it as quickly as possible. We have seen that the government is willing to pull out all the stops to make this stadium happen because they have promised it would happen. They have teams on their agencies all over the place working on this so that within a month or two they can turn around a piece of information that they will supply to us as MPs so that we can make the decision on a stadium. They have not done that with Ashley Youth Detention Centre. They have let this drag on and on and on. They have gone from saying they will close this centre in 2024 to now looking at most likely 2028, if it even happens then. That is not good enough. That is a broken promise to the young people of Tasmania. The government need to do better and pull out all the stops for young people in this state.
