The Country Liberal party’s plan to lower the age of criminal responsibility back to 10 in the Northern Territory is “really concerning” and part of a “tragic shift” towards more punitive policies nationwide, the head of Indigenous legal services has said.
Karly Warner, chair of National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, is warning that such policies will result in a “child jail crisis” and should be undone or at least accompanied by greater investment in proper prevention programs.
Warner, who is going to Canberra to lobby the Albanese government this week, said it was the responsibility of “all attorneys” to ensure that “really regressive law and order policies” that harm children do not get enacted.
After a landslide victory in the August Northern Territory election, Lia Finocchiaro has promised to overhaul justice policies with repeat and violent alleged offenders to be refused bail and the age of criminal responsibility lowered again to 10.
Warner told Guardian Australia: “Wherever we are around country, there are absolutely signs of a tragic shift back to these punitive policies that obviously lead to more children in jail and more dangerous communities.
“[But] the signal from the new NT government, particularly around abandoning what is set in legislation for the minimum age of criminal responsibility, is really concerning.”
She added: “Law and order posturing about punishment is absolutely not the thing that will create safer communities”.
“They can implement evidence-based policies that will actually make our communities safer … or they can implement policies, look tough in response and create an environment and Northern Territory where crime will thrive.”
Warner cited other examples including: the Queensland government suspending its Human Rights Act to imprison children in police watch houses for adults; the Victorian government backflipping on a commitment to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14; and New South Wales bail laws.
Warner said the “dangerous” NSW bail laws would see “more children locked up in jails rather than getting the supports they need” and instead facing an “apprenticeship of crime in youth prisons”.
“We fear the worst when it comes to children in custody. We are already seeing an increase, and recent history tells us that the outcomes will be unimaginable and tragic.
“We are extremely concerned that the proven programs that actually work to prevent crime – which have never been properly supported or funded – will now be even further deprioritised.”
After national cabinet on Friday, the Albanese government announced a five-year $3.9bn national legal assistance partnership, which is $800m more than the previous agreement.
Warner said the funding announcement was “incredibly appealing” but argued it amounted to $500m, or just $100m a year more than its predecessor, once the $300m for indexation and pay parity was accounted for.
“There is no way [that] goes even close to hitting the sides of the phenomenal demands of the legal assistance sector.”
In question time on Monday the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said the package was “the biggest single investment by the commonwealth in the legal assistance sector, ever”.
“Community legal centres, including women’s legal centres, are currently turning away up to 1,000 people per day,” he said. “This investment in legal assistance will ensure that those services can help more Australians.”
Dreyfus said it was “very significant” that the package included “a commitment to ongoing funding”, arguing this would give “confidence for the future” after “the Liberals oversaw a decade of chronic underfunding”.
The independent senator Lidia Thorpe noted the commitment “falls short” of the independent Mundy review call for an additional $459ma year to be provided as a floor from 2025 onwards.
Thorpe said the announcement was “smoke and mirrors” and “mostly a rebrand of existing funding arrangements”.
“Labor’s ongoing failure to properly fund these services will see First Peoples women, children and other vulnerable groups without access to life-saving legal services.”
