The newly elected Northern Territory Country Liberal Party (CLP) government passed a suite of punitive measures on October 16–17 to deliver on its promise to be “tough on crime”.
The measures are to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 12 back to 10, expand the presumption against bail for 10–17 year olds, designate stealing to be a “serious” offence and reinstate breach of bail as an offence.
The CLP has also increased police powers to use metal detectors on public transport and in primary schools. It has made it an offence to “post and boast” about criminal activity on social media.
Further measures it plans to introduce include making spitting on frontline workers, such as police, an offence carrying a mandatory imprisonment term.
The measures have drawn criticism from the community and some MPs who know the new laws will target First Nations children. Nearly 100% of youth in detention are Indigenous and the majority are on remand. Many are held in the notorious Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, a former adult prison that does not rehabilitate children.
Independent MLA for Mulka Yingiya Guyula addressed a rally outside parliament on October 16 and spoke against the bills inside.
“It has been known for a long time that the more people that are locked up, the more harm that is caused. This was the finding of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991.”
Indeed, that groundbreaking royal commission recommended, 34 years ago, that governments and organisations “recognise that the problems affecting Aboriginal juveniles are so widespread and have such potentially disastrous repercussions for the future that there is an urgent need … to devise strategies designed to reduce the rate at which Aboriginal juveniles are involved in the welfare and criminal justice systems.”
Instead of heeding that call, successive NT governments have entrenched cycles of poverty and criminalisation.
The previous NT Labor government raised the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 last year, but it also introduced new bail measures that led to a rise in the number of First Nations children behind bars.
Communities sent a strong message to NT Labor during the election campaign that it had failed to present a clear vision on community safety. Greens candidates in Fannie Bay and Braitling ran on a platform of addressing the root causes of crime and ousted Labor from the two-party preferred count, narrowly losing to the CLP.
Kat McNamara, who won Nightcliff and became the first Greens MLA, also addressed the rally. “The impact [of the CLP measures] is more people in prisons, which are already full, then they receive no rehabilitation, are further brutalised in the prison system, and then they are released with no support, and the cycle continues. It is madness. No-one is any safer.
“We need to listen to Aboriginal-controlled community organisations about what will work for their communities. And we need to be listening to the experts and the evidence, which is saying loud and clear that these draconian laws will do nothing to make us safer, it is just repeating the mistakes Territory governments have been making for decades.”
Natalie Hunter from Close Don Dale Now! spoke about the importance of building community pressure and supporting community-led solutions, a point echoed by Guyula.
“I speak for many other Elders when I say those words — not just Yolngu people but from across the Northern Territory,” Guyula said.
“We are sick and tired of being ignored by government after government. These are our people who you are locking up. We want to be part of the solution for looking after our people and helping to bring safety to all our communities.”