- In short: Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews doubts the government could deliver reforms recommended by the Yoorrook Justice Commission within 12 months
- What’s next? The government is under pressure to bring forward its plan to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has cast doubt on his government’s ability to deliver reforms recommended by the state’s Indigenous truth-telling inquiry within the “ambitious” time frame set out.
The Yoorrook Justice Commission delivered its report yesterday after a year-long inquiry, making 46 recommendations for reform that amounted to a major overhaul of the state’s child protection and criminal justice systems.
The commission is calling on the state government to create an independent watchdog to tackle police complaints, a First Nations-controlled child protection system and to stop detaining children under the age of 16.
It set a 12-month time frame for the government to deliver on “urgent” recommendations to reform the child protection and criminal justice systems.
Mr Andrews said the government would not respond immediately to the recommendations set out in the report.
“We will look at each and every one of the recommendations that have been made, from this report and the next report,” he said.
“Cabinet will have a proper, deliberative process to work through line by line, recommendation by recommendation and we will report progress.”
Mr Andrews described the 12-month time frame for urgent reforms set out in the report as “challenging” and would not commit to meeting that deadline.
“But again, being challenged is what this is all about. If this was easy someone else would have done it a hundred years ago.”
Push to accelerate timeline for ‘raising the age’
During a year-long inquiry, the Yoorrook Justice Commission found evidence of ongoing systemic racism and gross human rights abuses committed against First Peoples in the state of Victoria.
Among Yoorrook’s recommendations is a call for a new police oversight body — to be led by someone who is not a police officer — with the power to arrest and search Victoria Police officers and investigate police complaints and deaths in custody.
Yoorrook wants the new watchdog to have a dedicated First Peoples-led division to deal with police complaints from Aboriginal people.
It also called on the government to urgently introduce legislation to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14 without exceptions and to prohibit the detention of children under 16.
The Victorian government has committed to raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 in 2024, and then 14 by 2027.
“I think all of us can agree, except for the most serious of crimes, sending kids to ‘crime school’ is not necessarily a smart thing to do,” Mr Andrews said.
Victoria’s Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, Meena Singh, called on the government to move forward its timeframe for changes.
“It’s something that the commission has advocated for on the back of the Our Youth Our Way inquiry that looked at experiences of Aboriginal people and young people and the criminal justice system,” she told RN.
“So many different people have called for the raising of the age to 14, no exceptions, as soon as possible.”
Ms Singh said the punitive approach was not working.
“Children are becoming engaged with the criminal justice system at a very young age without those traumas being addressed and without those behaviours being understood and without any help for them,” she said.
“We know the earlier a child goes into the criminal justice system the more likely they are to stay entrenched and the more likely they are to progress to adult offending.”