The New South Wales premier has ruled out raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14 as he announced sweeping new laws that would make it harder for teenagers to get bail and would criminalise “posting and boasting” about offences on social media.
The Minns Labor government will this week introduce legislation to amend the laws along with a $26.2m package of initiatives it says will address youth crime in regional NSW.
The proposed changes have been criticised as “knee-jerk law and order responses” that will see more children jailed and push the state further from its Closing the Gap targets.
The attorney general, Michael Daley, said he was concerned the tougher bail laws would result in more young people being locked up but the government had no choice.
“If there was another option available to us today, to keep these children safe, we’d take it. But there isn’t,” he said.
The Bail Act would be changed to include an extra test for 14- to 18-year-olds charged with committing certain serious break-and-enter or motor vehicle theft offences while on bail for the same offences and seeking further bail.
The changes would mean police, magistrates and judges would need a “high degree of confidence” that a young person would not commit a further serious indictable offence if they were granted bail again. The laws will then be reviewed after 12 months.
Offenders could also have two years added to any prison term for posting material that “advertises” involvement in motor vehicle theft or break-and-enter offences online.
Daley raised concerns about young people in regional NSW filming themselves driving at “close to 300km/h” or breaking into houses “mostly to steal car keys” while armed with machetes and knives.
“It is only a matter of time someone is injured or killed,” he said.
He also expressed concern over posting on social media, which he described as “TikTok offences”.
The premier, Chris Minns, said the reforms were a “critical intervention” and there were already serious cases of life-threatening crimes being committed by young people.
“No one enters public life in the hope that you’ll introduce legislation like this and that includes myself, but we can’t face a situation where we have a cycle of repeat offences,” he said.
The changes come amid a broader debate over whether the age at which a child can be charged, convicted and incarcerated should be lifted from 10 to 14 in NSW and other states.
Minns on Tuesday said raising the age of criminal responsibility was not on the government’s agenda.
“We’re not proposing legislative change in relation to that. Self-evidently, it will fly in the face of the government’s proposed changes right now,” he said.
The government will also invest $13.4m into a pilot program in Moree, with plans to build bail and support accomodation, improve the delivery of youth services and provide resources for the local and children’s court.
Minns pointed to statistics showing break-and-enter offences in the town were 840% higher than the state average and motor vehicle theft offences were 680% higher than the state average.
The proposed legislative reforms were heavily criticised by reform advocates including Greens justice spokesperson, Sue Higginson, who accused the premier of introducing “knee-jerk law and order responses” that would keep more children trapped in the criminal justice system.
“All of the evidence before us shows that tougher, punitive measures do not reduce the incidence of crime – it just further traumatises the kids and damages social cohesion,” she said.
The chief executive of the NSW Aboriginal legal service, Karly Warner, said the “political stunt” was going to make things worse.
“This is a betrayal of everything that [Minns] and the NSW Labor Party said that you would do in partnership with us under Closing the Gap,” she said outside parliament on Tuesday.
“Aboriginal children are going to bear the consequences of this.”
The president of the Law Society of NSW, Brett McGrath, welcomed the funding but warned the bail law changes were being introduced “in the absence of any meaningful input” from experts.
“Tightening the test for bail will result in more children being sent into custody,” he said.
“In circumstances where youth justice centres are often many hours from child defendants’ families and communities, this change has the potential to do a great deal more harm than good.”
