The former Northern Territory Labor attorney general Chansey Paech has accused the new Country Liberal party government of planning to introduce a set of tough law-and-order measures as a form of “racial control” aimed at Indigenous people.
Ahead of the first sitting of the reconfigured NT parliament since the election wiped out the Labor government, Paech has launched a broadside at the new government’s legislative agenda in an interview with Guardian Australia’s Australian Politics podcast.
“I think what we’re seeing here is the Country Liberal government using the criminal justice system as a contemporary system of racial control, because the legislation that is being drafted disproportionately targets Aboriginal people in the territory,” Paech said.
Paech retained his central Australian seat of Gwoja at the August territory election. He is one of just four Labor MPs left in the NT parliament – all of whom are Indigenous and represent remote area electorates.
As attorney general, he was responsible in 2022 for raising the age of criminal responsibility in the NT from 10 to 12 in what was to be a staged process towards age 14. Next week the new chief minister, Lia Finocchiaro, will introduce legislation to lower it again to 10.
In a statement to Guardian Australia on Friday, Finocchiaro rejected Paech’s allegation that her planned changes on this and other aspects of law enforcement are aimed at controlling Indigenous people. She said voters gave her government a mandate to act on crime.
“Territorians have given us a very clear job to do, and we are getting it done,” Finocchiaro said.
“The CLP promised Territorians we would move swiftly to pass a series of laws relating to bail, public drinking, assaults on workers, ram raids and knife crime in the first sittings of parliament, and we are ready. Labor made a mess of the Territory. We will do the job of reducing crime, rebuilding the economy, and restoring our Territory lifestyle. We have a mandate to deliver our reforms. Laws apply equally to every Territorian.”
Paech also criticised measures to arrest and charge people for public drinking and the new NT government’s argument that it needs to stop people drinking in public and causing a “nuisance”.
“Well, how do you define someone who’s a nuisance and someone who’s not, out in the public having a drink? We know that crime is largely driven in the Northern Territory by people living in abject poverty, and that is mainly Aboriginal Territorians.”
Paech accused the new government of moving to undo all of the previous government’s reform contained in the Aboriginal Justice Agreement – including repealing mandatory sentencing, raising the age of criminal responsibility and providing custody facilities that were alternatives to jail – which he says was aimed at reducing incarceration.
“All of this work is being undone one piece of legislation at a time.”
Ahead of Monday’s one-year anniversary of the voice referendum, in which a majority of Australians rejected the proposal to enshrine an Indigenous voice to parliament in the constitution, Paech suggested that the three elements contained in the Uluru Statement from the Heart – voice, treaty and truth – were in the wrong order.
“I personally feel like we probably should have done the truth-telling part first, because out on the campaign trail for the voice, so many people just truly didn’t really understand or acknowledge the true history of this country,” he said.
Paech said the government should reinvest the money contained in the federal budget to implement the voice if the referendum had passed, and apply it to a formal truth-telling process.
The Albanese government has distanced itself from its pre-election promise to introduce a Makarrata, or truth-telling, commission.
