Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Look, I’m very grateful for Ms Rosol bringing this on and she has been a tireless advocate for children in this space. This is a space where it’s very, very hard to get any response from the government that is in line with the Commission of Inquiry’s recommendations and that is a shame for all the work and all the discussion and all the hand-wringing that was done by this Liberal government after the Commission of Inquiry, when they made such urgent recommendations about removing children from adult facilities.
It is really devastating to see the complete inaction from different ministers, but the response by Minister Palmer yesterday to Ms O’Connor’s questions in the Legislative Council were utterly shameful. She showed no interest at all in understanding or taking any responsibility for children and young people who are in detention, children and young people who are incarcerated in adult facilities. The evidence from the right to information work that Ms Rosol did makes it really clear. There were 306 children and young people who were kept in adult prisons, adult watch houses in the last financial year, 2025-26. That is 306 young people, and mind you, 14 of them were aged 12 to 13.
These are children who are primary school, first year of high school, kept in an adult facility. The custodial inspector himself was so clear that that was a wholly inappropriate place to put a child and a young person. Any person on the street would know that. We know the situation. We’ve seen the photos. Well, if you haven’t, please, I encourage people to go and have a look online. What children are getting in a space like that is a concrete floor with a concrete toilet with no toilet seat, with a vinyl covered mattress on the floor. Nothing else. Well, nothing else in the pictures I’ve seen except some takeaway food sitting in a sad little cardboard cup next to the bed. How devastating to think a 12 or a 13-year-old would be given some Maccas and some chips and you know, something else to try and comfort them while they’re sitting, lying, trying to sleep in a place that has loud clanging bars, security staff, police, other people screaming, shouting, drunk. These are the stories which have been reported to us by the Custodial Inspector, by other people, the children and young people in the past who have been to see children in these situations, by the evidence that was received from people to the Commission of Inquiry.
The government promised it would stop, but the comments by the minister for Justice just then and by the minister for Children and Young People last night show they have no interest in solving the problem, because if they did, they would have done something. Yet nothing has changed, and there were 32 children and young people in the last year who were put in an adult facility for over a day ‑ 32. It’s not just like an hour here and half an hour there, 32 actual young people aged between 12 and 17 were stuck in a concrete cell by themselves for over a day. Some of them, Deputy Speaker, for over two-and-a-half days.
This is a horrifying situation. It is against our international obligations. As a country, we signed up in 1984 to the international convention on the prevention of torture and degrading treatment and punishment, cruel and inhumane treatment, and it is hard to see this as anything other than cruel and inhumane treatment, anything other than state‑sanctioned child abuse. To leave children like that is disgusting. It’s a stain on Tasmania. The Commission of Inquiry heard evidence about the harms that it does to young people, and the government is doing nothing about it. Nothing real, nothing meaningful, nothing tangible, nothing with a time line, nothing with money attached to action. That’s what’s required, because that’s what people expect, because we have a soul in Tasmania, and this is wrong.
