Children’s welfare is the ‘elephant’ in Australia’s room

Passionate about children’s welfare since she worked as a child protection officer in western Sydney decades ago, Anne Hollonds, now the National Children’s Commissioner, is clearly frustrated that a major new report by her office is yet to receive a proper response from Australia’s leaders.

Or indeed, any significant response at all (at the time of meeting with The Record in early September), whether from the Government or Opposition, for as Ms Hollonds stresses, the issue is not party-political but lies at the very core of what Australia is, and should be, as a society.

‘’It’s a whole-of-Federation issue,’ she tells us, ‘and the major parties have completely failed. This should be a key priority for government but we've completely misunderstood the problem, expecting the justice system to solve it.

‘Children must be a key priority but at present they’re the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about beyond the crime issue. It’s so much more than that. This is a national shame.’

The Commissioner’s report, Help way earlier!: How Australia can transform child justice to improve safety and wellbeing, calls for transformational change to Australia’s child justice system in ways that would put child wellbeing first and address the root causes of offending.

“I just simply can’t understand why child safety and child wellbeing are not a key priority… in the way that other critical issues are.

• National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds on ABC RN Breakfast

It lays out a suite of recommendations aimed at helping vulnerable children thrive while keeping the broader community safe.

Commissioner Hollonds notes that the treatment of children in the criminal justice system, some as young as 10 years old, is one of the most urgent human rights issues facing Australia.

‘Of course we all want to live in communities where we feel safe,’ she wrote in Guardian Australia, ‘but decades of research have emphatically found that being “tough on crime” with kids is not the answer.

‘For too long governments have ignored the evidence that prevention, not punishment, is key to keeping our children and the community safe,’ her report adds.

‘We won’t be able to make our communities safer places for everyone if we just keep punishing and locking up kids without addressing the root causes of child offending...

‘There are common threads for kids who get into trouble: poverty, homelessness, violence and abuse, health and mental health issues, disabilities and learning problems, dropping out early from school and – for many First Nations and migrant families – systemic racism and intergenerational trauma. For most, these are disadvantages from birth.’

Along with the human rights dimension, she quotes the astounding cost of incarcerating children: $1.0 million per child per annum.

The report urges reform based on both evidence and human rights, highlighting that this requires child safety and wellbeing to be made a national priority. It calls for collaborative action across federal, state and territory governments, with a range of urgent measures. These include establishing a National Taskforce for Child Justice Reform, a federal Cabinet Minister for Children, a national Ministerial Council for Child Wellbeing and better protection of children’s rights by enactment of a National Children’s Act and a federal Human Rights Act

It also urges the Australian Government to increase the level of income support payments for children, young people and families, and for it to urgently prioritise access to safe and affordable housing for children and families, including those in the child protection and justice systems.

These are also key policies in St Vincent de Paul Society’s A Fairer Australia platform.

Before the report’s release, in a ‘law and order’ election climate, the Northern Territory’s LNP promised to legislate to lower the age of criminal of responsibility from 12 years to 10. It won in a landslide and has shown no sign of resiling from its promise, despite this being at odds with most Australian Attorneys-General.

Similarly, the Queensland LNP opposition has pledged to sentence certain child offenders as adults if it wins the forthcoming election. The Commissioner believes recent weeks have marked ‘a major step backwards for the rights of Australia’s children’.

St Vincent de Paul Society has long advocated for the age of criminal responsibility across all Australian jurisdictions to be raised to 14 years, a position supported by one of the report’s 24 recommendations and argued forcefully by Ms Hollonds who believes that early incarceration does little more than hardwire young people into an ongoing life of crime.

Signs of this are evident in the Sydney suburb of Mt Druitt where Ms Hollonds did her early work with children at risk. Returning there recently, she saw children as young as 10 in local parks, affected by hard drugs - ‘This was much worse than it was back in the day,’ she says.

Commissioner Hollonds has realised the need to ‘politicise’ the issue after being told by politicians off the record that there are ‘no votes in children’, a comment that has her shaking her head in wonder.

Rising to the challenge, she has been amplifying her messages to the media, addressing the National Press Club and, in the lead-up to the next federal election, is urging anyone interested – which should be everyone – to ask their MPs and electoral candidates to list children’s welfare as a key policy priority.

‘It is my urgent plea to the prime minister and leaders of all governments to look closely at the evidence, agree to make child wellbeing a key priority and work together across the federation.’

The National Children’s Commissioner’s report is at https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/childrens-rights/publications/help-way-earlier

Commissioner Hollonds spoke to 150 children and young people, their families and stakeholders, and recorded a video to report on what she heard - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2N1K2ycII4

 

Senate inquiry announced

On 11 September 2024, the Senate referred the matter of Australia’s youth justice and incarceration system to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee for an inquiry due to report by 26 November 2024. The closing date for submissions is 10 October 2024. Details at Australia’s youth justice and incarceration system – Parliament of Australia (aph.gov.au)

 

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