Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Speaker, I move –
That the House take note of the following matter: children in Ashley Youth Detention Centre.
On 22 May, the Commissioner for Children and Young People released a statement revealing that at the beginning of that week there had been 26 children and young people detained at Ashley Youth Detention Centre, highlighting that this was the highest number of children held in detention in at least a decade.
In response to questions yesterday, the Minister for Children and Young People advised that on Monday 10 June, there were 19 children and young people detained in Ashley Youth Detention Centre, with their ages ranging from 13 to 18 years. Six were sentenced and 13 were on remand, and I note that today the minister reports this number has reduced by two.
In August 2023, the commission of inquiry recommended the closure of Ashley Youth Detention Centre as soon as possible. This followed many years of similar calls for the centre to be closed and has also been Greens policy since 2018 when we proposed a therapeutic model. Despite this, more young people are being detained at Ashley Youth Detention Centre than ever before.
Yesterday, when commenting on the higher than usual numbers of young people in detention, the minister stated that those numbers were driven by decisions made by courts, not by the youth justice system, as if his hands were tied and the number of children detained in Ashley Youth Detention Centre was somehow outside of his control. There are many factors at play in the number of children being held in detention.
The strike-force response of the state government labels children as criminals and flies in the face of the government’s own Youth Justice Blueprint that emphasises the need to invest in the lives of young people in ways that reduce their likelihood of engaging in criminal behaviour. The strike-force, tough-on-crime rhetoric also flies in the face of the principles of therapeutic justice, which are again laid out in the Youth Justice Blueprint. This rhetoric creates an atmosphere that lends itself to young people being stigmatised and criminalised, rather than being respected and treated with the care and compassion that would benefit them.
We know that lack of accommodation options for children and young people who could otherwise be released on bail is contributing to them being held on remand. Children and young people lack access to legal services while they are in Ashley Youth Detention Centre, meaning they languish in detention with no-one to advocate for them or push for action in their cases.
The government has failed to work with community organisations, who are ready and able to work collaboratively with the government to identify and address the needs of currently detained children. Just yesterday, TasCOSS wrote to the Tasmanian parliament and reaffirmed their willingness and availability to commence this work urgently. We know that there are actions that can be taken right now and services that have offered to help. Actions we could take include raising the age of criminal responsibility as soon as possible, reducing the number of children in detention, and establishing a special task force to urgently address the number of young people in detention. To date, the government has made no commitment to establish this task force, despite calls from the community and from the Commissioner for Children and Young People to establish such a task force.
Another action we could take is to provide access to a full-time on‑site lawyer and social worker in Ashley Youth Detention Centre to help progress the cases of children and young people, ensuring more speedy court hearings that would enable a more expedient release from detention. We could work more urgently to develop and provide diversion options which are not being utilised at the moment, and we could work urgently with the community service providers who already have the experience, connections and ability to respond to the needs of young people. Action could also be taken to urgently fund alternative accommodation for children on remand to keep them from ending up detained in Ashley Youth Detention Centre. This is how we can begin to turn around the lives of young people.
We call upon the government to move beyond broad, sweeping statements of commitment to children and therapeutic care, to cease with the tough-on-crime rhetoric that is only damaging Tasmanian children and young people, and to take urgent, clear and measurable action that will make a meaningful difference to the young people of Tasmania.
