Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the latest assault on black and brown kids, the Allan Labor government wants to lock up 14-year-olds for life. This announcement came soon after the Australian Youth Representative to the UN, Satara Uthayakumaran, published her report which said:

Young people describe Australia's youth justice system as punitive, not rehabilitative. First contact is often punishment, not protection: handcuffs before help, cells before care.

The testimonies in this report include a child stating:

They stripped me in my cell. The moment they pulled my pants down—that's when I stopped feeling like a human.

Another said the detention centre 'locked up 14-year-olds with disabilities for 23 hours a day—then wondered why they broke'. While kids in detention centres wrote letters to the Prime Minister pleading with him to look out for them, crying out for protection, Prime Minister Albanese stood side-by-side with Premier Allan, praising this latest move as evidence she is doing an excellent job. How dare the Prime Minister! And how dare Premier Allan sign with one hand the treaty for Victoria, while her other hand writes laws that can jail First Nations children for life. Adult time for adult crime is a harmful, inhumane and racist policy to grab new scope to control votes, while throwing kids under the bus. It does nothing but have devastating consequences for children and families. In the words of Monique Hurley from the Human Rights Law Centre:

Children deserve care, not cages and adult prison sentences. The Allan Government's proposed laws will condemn children as young as 14 to irreversible harm and an incredibly bleak future behind bars.

These laws are reckless and shameful, and they should be scrapped.