Wednesday, 14 August 2024

Age of criminal responsibility

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (10:07): Yesterday we saw the Victorian Labor Premier make a shameful decision that will see more kids end up in Victoria’s prisons, a decision that also abandons a promise to Victoria’s First Nations communities, elders and leaders. The Victorian Labor government had promised to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14. This would mean that 12- and 13-year-olds could not be charged and locked up in our prisons and instead would be put on an alternative pathway to keep them out of the criminal justice system. But yesterday Labor bowed to pressure from the right-wing tabloid media and from a scare campaign from the police and the Liberal Party, and I think it is absolutely disgraceful that this is how things are being run in this state.

What is worse, this abandons a promise to our First Nations communities, who have been crying out for this to keep First Nations kids out of our prisons. Victoria was supposed to be a progressive beacon. It is supposed to be a place that leads the way for other states to follow, and that was what was supposed to happen with Raise the Age. The Victorian Labor Premier has abandoned that in a knee-jerk reaction because she is too scared of a headline in the Herald Sun rather than doing the right thing by Victorian kids and by our First Nations community. This was a Yoorrook Justice Commission recommendation. It has been a recommendation of royal commissions, and yet the Labor government is going back on all of that.