David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The details that have come out in the last 24 hours of what's happening in the Northern Territory's watch house in the Palmerston Police Station are utterly chilling. Sixteen people in a single cell is not an unpleasant story; it's deeply unsafe and a code for violence. These are the kinds of conditions that people die in. Women's cells are horrifically crowded and stained with period blood. The reports include that of a woman who was a domestic violence victim who was wrongly identified and held as a perpetrator for five days in the police watch house in Palmerston. That was a woman who had been brought to the attention of police because she had been beaten severely and threatened with rape, and then she was locked up for five days in a Palmerston watch house. On top of that, 11-year-old girls are being held in these appalling conditions. These are kids, girls who should be in year 5 at school, held in these hell-like conditions in the Northern Territory Police Force watch house.

It is appalling that the Northern Territory's response to this human rights abuse is to build more prisons and more prison cells. The Northern Territory government is punching down and blaming vulnerable people for broken social and health systems, jailing women and kids in these most appalling conditions. While this news has broken in the last 24 hours, we have known about it for months and years. We need more than symbolism from this government and acknowledgements of country, as important as they are. It must be the job of the federal government, the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General to make sure 11-year-old girls are not held in these hell-like conditions in the Palmerston Police Station. We must step up.