Shane* is currently incarcerated in Perth. Like more than 40% of people imprisoned in Western Australia, Shane is Indigenous. As a First Nations person in WA, he is 16 times more likely to spend time behind bars than a non-Aboriginal person.
After being homeless for many years, living on the streets of the inner-city hotspot of Northbridge, he was found guilty of committing a violent crime and sent to jail. His life has been, in the words of his lawyer, “one difficult moment after another”.
As a Noongar man, his traditional land covers Perth and the south-west of the state.
Shane has been denied parole and when he leaves prison, he will be released back into homelessness without any government support.
But new proposed laws tabled in WA’s Parliament last week pose another issue for people like Shane.
The Protected Entertainment Precinct (PEP) Bill would apply to five Perth entertainment precincts — Northbridge, Mandurah, Hillarys, Scarborough and Fremantle — and would automatically prohibit people who are convicted of committing certain crimes in one of the precincts from entering any of the precincts for five years.
Some of these offences include assault and murder, but a controversial feature of the bill is causing concern among various legal and Indigenous community groups. Along with the mandatory five-year bans, the proposed law would allow police to impose “exclusion orders” of up to six months for people behaving in an “offensive, violent or merely anti-social manner”.
The WA government argues this is designed to keep the community safe. When we spoke to Racing and Gaming Minister Tony Buti, he did not respond specifically to questions about how the law would impact Indigenous residents but said the government was addressing “antisocial behaviour and violence” in entertainment precincts after consultation.
“Ultimately the Western Australian public deserves to be able to enjoy these precincts with the knowledge that convicted criminals, violent thugs, rapists and drink spikers are not allowed back in,” he said. “When we make entertainment precincts safer, we’re supporting business, supporting families and supporting a culture of fun without fear.”
What this bill will achieve, however, is debatable. The director of legal services at the Aboriginal Legal Service of WA (ALSWA), Peter Collins, is adamant that the laws will “disproportionately impact Aboriginal people”.
Collins paints a bleak outlook for Shane’s future. His offence falls under the scope of the new laws. If Shane was convicted after this law was legislated, he would receive an automatic five-year ban from all of the PEP precincts.
Where he lived on the streets — around the Northbridge area in the CBD — is one of the precincts featured in the new laws. This is also where numerous Noongar outreach programs operate and many of the people he interacts with still live.
For people like Shane, coming back to the only place they know would inevitably result in a breach of banning orders within days. The consequences of breaching exclusion orders — up to two years’ imprisonment and a $12,000 fine — could lead to further incarceration of First Nations peoples. This would also preoccupy many legal groups, such as ALSWA, which are already overwhelmed.
Both ALSWA and the Law Society of WA have been critical of the government for its lack of consultation, with no Indigenous group having been contacted before this proposed law was announced. Furthermore, it appears antithetical to WA Labor’s promise to lower Indigenous incarceration rates.
Noongar people lived in WA’s south-west for tens of thousands of years prior to colonisation. These proposed laws will give police authority to ban Noongar people from their traditional land, even if they do not commit an offence.
Furthermore, the WA police force, which has been the subject of multiple claims of racist policing and racial profiling of Aboriginal people, is now being given the power to ban people from all PEP precincts for six months without any judicial oversight.
Imposing a five-year ban on people after leaving prison goes against the principles of rehabilitative justice, and means many Aboriginal people, who already face considerable socioeconomic challenges upon leaving prison, will be further punished.
The state government has decided to push a “tough on crime” stance, without any consultation with Indigenous groups, at a time when WA has the highest incarceration rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the country. This new law will only exacerbate these horrifying statistics.
*Not his real name
