Queensland’s human rights commissioner has told a parliamentary committee that “public anxiety” is no justification for overriding the state’s Human Rights Act to make breach of bail an offence for children, warning that doing so could set a precedent.
In a tense back-and-forth during a hearing into the proposed youth crime laws, Scott McDougall said he was deeply concerned about the impact that the suspension of the act could have.
“There is no justification for overriding the Human Rights Act in this case,” he said.
“There is no exceptional crisis situation constituting a threat to public safety.
“We do want to preserve the Human Rights Act. We don’t want to set a precedent where the government suspends the Human Rights Act because there is public anxiety.”
The chair of the economics and governance committee, Labor MP Linus Power, argued the government could override the Human Rights Act, to which McDougall responded: “The sovereignty of the parliament is still supreme [but] human rights still exist and are internationally recognised.”
It comes after the government introduced a controversial suite of measures to crack down on youth crime last week, which included making breach of bail an offence for children and expanding an electronic monitoring trial for children as young as 15.
Along with the new bail laws, the police minister, Mark Ryan, submitted a statement that acknowledged they were not compatible with human rights or international standards.
On Tuesday McDougall said the government must come up with solutions that “will actually work to reduce crime and protect the community”.
“That is much more sustainable,” he told the committee.
He also slammed the government for the lack of consultation on the bill and the two-and-a-half days given to prepare submissions, saying it was “inadequate and not consistent with good law-making practices”.
The vice-president of the Queensland Law Society, Rebecca Fogerty, also told the committee she stood with many other peak bodies in “strong opposition” to the bill that “fails to recognise the underlying causes of youth crime”.
The chief executive of Sisters Inside, Debbie Kilroy, accused the government of not being willing to fund the solutions to keep children out of custody.
“I was one of the 13-year-old children that you now label serious, repeat offenders … the harm of the racial, gendered policing has continued throughout my lifetime and continues today,” she said.
“What you’re basically saying as adults is we can’t support the 300-400 children [you’ve labelled repeat offenders]. I think that’s a sad indictment.”
The barrister James Benjamin said the new breach of bail offence would “only serve in increasing number of children in youth detention”, making “a deplorable situation even worse”.
Benjamin said courts recognise that young people need more support than adults and as a consequence they are often subjected to more onerous bail conditions.
The principal commissioner of the Queensland Family and Child Commission, Luke Twyford, said the bill was “reactive” and could have a disproportionate impact on First Nations children.
“Queensland currently detains more young people than any other state. The strategy in this bill in doing more of the same needs to be questioned,” he told the hearing.
Twyford said the proposed laws would make breaching any bail condition an offence, such as attending school or being at a certain residence at a certain time.
“That does not take into account what adults are in that residence at that time and how are they treating the child [or] who is taking that young person to school,” he said.
But some victims of crime supported the government’s proposed changes. Michelle Liddle, the mother of murdered teenager Angus Beaumont, said she believed if breach of bail was an offence her son might still be alive today.
At the time of the murder, one of the offenders was on bail and the other on probation.
“We feel if [breach of] bail was made an offence … we would not be where we are grieving our son’s loss,” she said.
