Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Madam Speaker. I rise to respond to Minister Ellis’s proud claims this morning that the government would be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime to protect people. What a disappointing, outrageous, and uninformed response to the question raised by Ms Badger, the Member for Lyons.
We face a difficult situation with social breakdown and an increase in anti-social behaviours. We definitely need to address these issues, but being tough on crime will not protect people. Instead, locking young people up will increase their sense of alienation and do nothing to address the underlying causes of difficult antisocial or criminal behaviours. I note the contradiction in what minister Ellis said this morning, on one hand saying being tough on crime and locking young people up, while on the other saying being tough on the causes of crime to protect people. We know that the causes of crime come from the things that I spoke about yesterday in my inaugural speech.
We know that when people experience intergenerational trauma, intergenerational poverty and disadvantage, that they are deeply affected, and it has an impact on them for the rest of their lives. We know the effect of trauma on young people. They experience the world as unsafe and live in a constant state of threat. They struggle to regulate their emotions and manage their behaviours and they have incredibly low sense of self-worth and carry around a deep sense of shame at all times. All these effects of trauma are what lead to difficult behaviours that can be unpleasant and unsafe.
Being tough on crime is not the correct approach to respond to this and it will only lead to more trauma, and we have seen that that is what happens at the moment in places like Ashley Youth Detention Centre. Being tough on crime will only lead to more trauma and a repeat and escalating cycle of misdemeanour, as more shame is triggered in these young people, and they have an increasing lack of safety. We have to look at the root causes of criminal behaviour and dig below the surface to identify circumstances that have led to them and respond to the needs these behaviours reveal.
I know from my fostering that we use a model in fostering called P.A.C.E., which is like a therapeutic approach to caring for children. P stands for playfulness, A stands for acceptance, C stands for curiosity, and E stands for empathy, so P.A.C.E. provides a sense of safety to children and to young people and that therapeutic approach is much more effective in helping them recover from the trauma than they have experienced than any kind of strict draconian response would ever be. I think we can expand that model of pace and think about that more broadly at a systemic level and think what are we doing for the young people of our state to help them to feel safer, to help them have their needs met, for them to feel cared for and valued. Once we start to address those issues, we will start to see changes. They might take a while to come through, but we will start to see changes there.
It is not just me saying this; the Commissioner for Children and Young People describes the government’s tough‑on‑crime approach as a blatant disregard for the rights of children and the Commission of Inquiry has made strong recommendations which focused on the need for therapeutic approaches to youth crime.
I would call on the government to lay down their tough‑on‑crime approach. It is not going to work and perhaps to put more emphasis on their tough‑on‑the‑causes of crime comments and actually do what is necessary to make things safer for our children so that they are less likely to engage in criminal behaviours.
