Last week, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples released a damning statement on the nationwide crisis in youth justice
A new RTI by the Greens shows the corrections system is in crisis, with over 6,000 prison lockdowns occurring in 2024.
There might not be an excuse for government delay on working through and enacting a human rights act for Tasmania but there are reasons that are reasonably easy to understand.
Minister for Corrections, Madeleine Ogilvie MP, admitted in Legislative Council Budget Estimates today that it is unacceptable for the National Preventative Mechanism not to have the funding it needs to prevent the inhumane treatment or torture of Tasmanians in places where their freedoms are restricted.
I want to go back to the National Preventative Mechanism. The Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment requires that state parties undertake to make available the necessary resources for the functioning of the national preventative mechanism. Minister, you failed to do this, but your government can find $4 million for a chocolate fountain at Cadbury.
Minister, do you concede that the allocation of two and a-half million dollars less than what the NPM needed means that your government has funded it to the extent that it cannot perform its statutory obligations; and that is to prevent the inhumane or degrading treatment where their liberty may have been taken away from them.
The Rockliff Government’s decision to not appropriately resource the Office of the Tasmanian National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) is alarming and should be immediately addressed.
Yesterday, the Custodial Inspector released the Inhumane Treatment in Dry Cells Review. It is the first report of its kind in the nation and it is devastating reading.
International Human Rights Watch’s World Report for 2023* highlights how Tasmania’s recently passed laws “invoke severe penalties for non-violent protest”
The UN Committee against Torture’s concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of Australia provides substantive recommendations for Tasmania.
