Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I might stay at my table today because there seems to be a lot of sickness in the Chamber and I do not want to get infected.
The Greens supported the Justice Miscellaneous Reporting Procedures Bill in the other place. We recognise that this is a recommendation of the commission of inquiry. There is a higher-order principle here: we all have a duty of care to children and young people, and while that duty is prescribed to statutory bodies and other reporting bodies, it is a responsibility that sits on all our shoulders. There has been systemic failure of that responsibility in Tasmania ever since colonisation; that became clear through the evidence given by victim-survivors and whistleblowers, and indeed representatives of the government, through the commission of inquiry.
On behalf of the Greens, we thank the commission of inquiry for the work that they did. If all the recommendations are implemented, funded and given full effect, then Tasmania will be a much safer place for children and young people; but I cannot let this moment go by without also noting that we have a form of policy schizophrenia in government. We have, on the one hand, the government that committed to establishing the commission of inquiry on the basis of evidence of profound harm and systemic failure, that committed to implementing the recommendations of the commission of inquiry and indeed has put forward a staged plan to do that. For example, each time a minister comes before the commission of inquiry oversight committee, we have it again restated how committed the government is to implementing the recommendations of the commission of inquiry and to making Tasmania safe for children and young people.
That is happening on one hand; and then on the other hand, we have a rogue Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Management, who is talking about ‘adult crime, adult time’ laws, who almost relishes demonising young people who find themselves on the wrong side of the law. In public policy terms, you simply cannot have it both ways. The key message from the commission of inquiry in relation to youth justice was that you need to have tailored, therapeutic responses, well-funded services and you need to be keeping children and young people out of the youth justice system and out of the criminal justice system and not be implementing policies that criminalise them. Yet we have this other policy approach being gleefully touted by the minister for police.
That is something that all members in this place should be watching for, because we all collectively committed to delivering on the outcomes of the commission of inquiry. You cannot do that if it is your policy to target young people. You cannot do that if you target young people through such things as Operation Raven and if it is your policy, which is coming into effect in hard numbers, to put more children and young people into Ashley Youth Detention Centre, in on remand and into adult watch houses. That is completely counter to the recommendations of the commission of inquiry and to the evidence. We are seeing what is happening in Queensland now too, where, regrettably, they do not have any house of review – where they have passed their first suite of ‘adult crime, adult time’ laws. They have removed the presumption of bail for young people in Queensland. They treat two types of people who come before their criminal justice system completely differently – a young person has the presumption off bail removed in Queensland, an adult does not.
Ms Forrest – It is not really treating children as adults if they do ‘adult time out for adult crime’, is it?
Ms O’CONNOR – No, it certainly is not. It is treating them more harshly than adults and it was condemned by the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Torture only recently. I like to think that we have a Premier who recognises the importance of therapeutic approaches to youth justice, and I hope that is the case. We have a very troubling collision of public policy here and the people who will be caught in the middle will be our marginalised and disadvantaged young people.
As the minister who fought hard inside and outside Cabinet to have the Registration to Work with Vulnerable People Act 2013 introduced and debated, I do have a close personal interest in these amendments. At the time that I was finally able to have this bill drafted and introduced to the parliament, we were the only Australian state that had no registration process for people to work with children and young people, to our great shame. We are, thankfully, no longer that. We always knew that having a registration system to work with vulnerable people was only one part of the structures and the framework necessary for creating a child-safe Tasmania. It is an important one, however, and it has delivered more robustness into the system, of who we will allow to work with children and young people, knowing some of the egregious and tragic mistakes of the past.
The Greens are pleased to see that these amendments formalise the ability for an everyday person, a member of the public, to report worrying behaviours to the registrar; behaviours that they think run the risk of damaging a child, whether it be through abuse, neglect, violence, sexual abuse, or a combination of all of the above. This is an important minor reform to the Registration to Work with Vulnerable People Act 2013 and perhaps this is something the Acting Leader of Government Business could help us understand.
I hope that there will be community engagement on this issue. Of course, it is something that has to be done quite thoughtfully, but to enable Tasmanians to know that if they see something about the way a person is treating a child or young person in a position of trust or authority, then they are welcomed, invited and encouraged to report that behaviour to the Registrar. There is a whole, as I recall, there is a series of tests and assessments that are done through that Registrar’s registration process and connections with other jurisdictions. As there should be, because, as members of parliament, we have all heard stories about perpetrators fleeing the state and going off to do harm to children in another jurisdiction. This, again, is another area where there needs to be very strong national consistency and coordination.
With those few comments and that question I am happy to report that the Greens continue to support this bill. The changes to the Magistrates Court Act 1987 and the Supreme Court Civil Procedure Act 1932 are quite minor and eminently supportable. I thank the government for bringing this forward.
