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OSMAN:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Osman Faruqi, this is 7am.

In 2015, the Northern Territory government announced a Royal Commission into Youth Detention, to try and address what many described as a broken system. But six years on, Indigenous people still make up 84 percent of the prisoner population in the NT. And on most days, every single young person in detention in the territory is Indigenous. Now, the Northern Territory government has announced new criminal justice reforms that could see even more young Indigenous people being locked up.

Today, lawyer and executive officer of Change the Record, Sophie Trevitt, on why the Northern Territory is undoing the recommendations of the Royal Commission and what the consequences will be.

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OSMAN:

Sophie, you worked as a lawyer in Alice Springs. Can you tell me about that experience and what you observed during that time?

SOPHIE:

So I moved to Alice Springs just about the same time as the royal commission into the protection and detention of young people was called. And my first job in Alice Springs was about pulling together all of the stories and the evidence from young people who'd been held both in the Alice Springs Youth Detention Centre and in the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre during that time so that we could put that evidence to the royal commission.

I mean I think the clearest thing was that the justice system is and was completely broken, to be honest, in the three years that I was working in the Northern Territory, I never saw a non-indigenous child in a youth detention centre. So that's obviously a huge problem to start with. We have this mass incarceration of almost exclusively Aboriginal children, but the way in which these children were treated was, without exception, pretty horrific. So that ranges from the physical abuse of kids, kids being locked in in cells for hours and days on end, not able to to leave their cell, to go to school or to have meals or to see family. And then, right through to the sort of long-term impacts of that, the lack of any therapeutic support, the lack of any mental health support, these kids would just get released after enduring this trauma in youth detention and be provided with no support on the outside. So, not able to re-engage with school or having troubles at home. And you just saw the cycle repeat again and again and again.

OSMAN:

Mm and you mentioned the royal commission into youth detention. Can you tell me more about the circumstances leading up to it being established? What was the kind of trigger, I guess, for it to start?

SOPHIE:

So there was a big national story that was aired on on Four Corners called ‘A National Shame’...

Archival Tape -- Four Corners report:

“Welcome to Four Corners. The image you’ve just seen isn’t from Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib, but Australia in 2015. This is juvenile justice in the Northern Territory.”

SOPHIE:

...which showed the treatment of Aboriginal kids in the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.

Archival Tape -- Four Corners report:

“A boy hooded, shackled, strapped to a chair and left alone.”

SOPHIE:

Particularly it showed Dylan Voller as a young Aboriginal person, being restrained on a chair with a hood over his head.

Archival Tape -- Guards speaking to Dylan Voller.

SOPHIE:

There was also airing of footage of Aboriginal kids being tear gassed within a cell and yelling and crying for help. So that was the impetus and then what came out of the royal commission was actually this wasn't an isolated incident. There were you know, there was abuse and that kind of treatment that was going on all the time.

OSMAN:

And what did the royal commission recommend in terms of dealing with the issues that it had been presented with?

SOPHIE:

So the royal commission made, you know, over 200 recommendations for a total structural overhaul of the youth justice system. And that goes from the drivers of kids into this system that is harming them, right through to the treatment of these young people when they are behind bars. So they recommended things like raise the age of criminal responsibility, so that you stop sending extremely young children into a system that basically traps them there; increase the ways in which kids can access bail so that they're not being held behind bars while they're waiting to appear before court.

The vast majority of children in the Northern Territory and in fact, around the country, but particularly in the Northern Territory, who are being locked up, haven't even been convicted of a crime. They're just being locked up, waiting to have to have their turn before court to find out whether or not they did commit the offence that they've been charged with. And the royal commission recommended putting more funding and investing more heavily in diversion programmes, community control programmes, working with Aboriginal elders and the whole community to keep kids out of the prison system altogether.

OSMAN:

So how did the NT government respond to those royal commission recommendations? Did it take them on board?

SOPHIE:

So initially it looked as though the Northern Territory government had taken on board the recommendations.

Archival Tape -- Michael Gunner:

“I'm sorry, I think I should begin with saying that again, it's clear that successive Northern Territory governments have failed…”

SOPHIE:

They even said that the royal commission paper was the most important document that the government had ever received.

Archival Tape -- Michael Gunner:

“Today, I can say it will continue with us accepting the recommendation that Don Dale should shut. This royal commission very much began there and it needs to end there.”

SOPHIE:

So they had put in a bunch of protections in legislation to try to protect children from the use of force within prisons. So they introduced these reforms that said, you know, only in really acute situations can staff members use force against a child, can they restrain a child, can they lock the child in their cell - a whole bunch of reforms of that nature.

Archival Tape -- Michael Gunner:

“The commissioners have given us a three month time frame to produce a work programme. We accept that timeframe.”

SOPHIE:

But then about 18 months after the royal commission recommendations were handed down. We saw the first big backflip and it was in response to a bunch of sort of tabloid media coverage of youth crime in the Northern Territory. The government basically made it worse than the situation was before the royal commission and really expanded the ways in which staff could use force against kids. So there was a period of time, for example, where they brought bouncers from the local pubs into youth detention centres in Alice Springs, and of course, those bouncers then use the new uses of force that you were able to, after this backflip, to basically manhandle children to try to maintain control. So that was the first back-pedalling that we saw.

Then a few weeks ago, A Current Affair released what can only be described as a pretty salacious 15 minute exposé into youth crime in Alice Springs.

Archival Tape -- A Current Affair report:

“Locals say crime has always been a problem in Alice Springs. Night after night, a majority of Alice Springs residents lock their doors and stay home, surrendering their streets to a trouble making minority.”

SOPHIE:

And in response to that, I can only assume the Northern Territory government came out and introduced a raft of tough-on-crime, punitive law reform measures that would specifically target young people. And the only foreseeable response to that is that the number of young people, and particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people that are being locked up behind bars is going to skyrocket in the territory.

OSMAN:

We’ll be right back

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OSMAN:

Sophie, can you tell me more about the new laws being proposed in the Territory, what is the government planning to do?

Archival Tape -- Michael Gunner:

“Today we’re announcing a new suite of measures that will help make Territorians safer…”

SOPHIE:

So they propose to change the bail laws. So to basically make it harder for kids to get bail.

Archival Tape -- Michael Gunner:

“Bail is a privilege, not a right. Territorians are trusting you on bail and you need to do the right thing while you’re on bail.”

SOPHIE:

So when a child is charged with an offence, they've expanded the list of crimes that means they go straight to lock up instead of being bailed to family members in the community, for example. So this is before a child has been convicted of any offence at all, to be clear. They also restricted the way in which a court can decide to use diversion for a child.

Archival Tape -- Michael Gunner:

“We’re also giving police extra ability and more circumstances in which they can apply electronic monitoring. They are a couple of the things we are doing in order to make Territorians safer.”

SOPHIE:

And the final big area is this proposal beefs up the powers for police. So in what I think is an unprecedented move nationally, there's a proposal that police will be able to slap on GPS tracking devices on a child before a child has even gone to court. So that's the decision of the police to decide to monitor and surveil the child. Probably one of the most shocking elements of this announcement by the Northern Territory government was just how transparent it was at the same time as announcing this raft of reforms that goes really directly against the royal commission. The Northern Territory government also announced that it would be funnelling five million dollars in expanding youth remand centres.

Archival Tape -- Michael Gunner:

“But the promise I make to you is that we will never stop working on making the Territory safer.”

SOPHIE:

And to be clear, what that means is they are openly acknowledging that in direct response to this suite of reforms, we are going to see more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children put behind bars.

OSMAN:

Sophie, these proposed laws seem to be the opposite of what the Royal Commission recommended. And, as you say, will likely lead to even more Indigenous children being locked up. So what’s the response to all of this been -- has there been pushback?

SOPHIE:

Yeah huge pushback

Archival Tape -- Priscilla Atkins:

“Can you hear me now?”

SOPHIE:

Basically from everybody apart from the Northern Territory government and police.

Archival Tape -- Priscilla Atkins:

“My name's Priscilla Atkins and I'm the co-chair of NATSILS. That's the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service and I have been the CEO of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency for over 14 years.”

SOPHIE:

NAAJA, the Aboriginal Legal Service provider, that provides legal services for kids in the central desert and in the Top End have said that the Northern Territory government needs to abandon these reforms and stay the course with the royal commission.

Archival Tape -- Priscilla Atkins:

“And then all of a sudden this comes into the media. There wasn't any consultation with the community and it goes totally against the recommendations that the NT government has committed to.”

SOPHIE:

There's a group of Aboriginal grandmothers in the central desert who are strong advocates for their grandkids who have come out and said, you know, we are here and we want to be providing culturally safe alternatives for these kids.

Archival Tape -- Priscilla Atkins:

“And we've got the evidence to show that, you know, if any of our youth that attend the youth justice conferencing, 80 percent of them don't re-offend. 80 percent of our youth that attend youth cultural camps don't re-offend. So we know that these programmes work, but locking them up doesn't work.”

SOPHIE:

And Aboriginal controlled health care service providers have come out and said, you know, so many of these young people are experiencing mental health concerns, disabilities. We need to be meeting their needs, not punishing them further.

Archival Tape -- Priscilla Atkins:

“What we want is the government to listen to Aboriginal led solutions, and we want our kids to be healthy and have their culture and have their families being supported and connected to a caring home. This is what we want. I think by locking youth up, they're not going to achieve that.”

SOPHIE:

Literally, everybody has come out and said that these reforms are going to be a disaster and they are going to be a disaster for Aboriginal children.

OSMAN:

Sophie, it feels like like you said, we know what the answers are. You've just outlined a bunch of them. And we've got royal commissions and so many enquiries and experts telling us exactly what we need to do. But, you know, even after it seemed like the NT government was initially stepping towards those reforms, we're now going backwards. Why do you think we keep seeing this pattern play out like this?

SOPHIE:

I think until both sides of politics decide that they are not going to play politics with children's lives, we are going to see this trajectory of making a little bit of progress and then back flipping as soon as there's a bad media story continue. So if we see, for example, like we've seen in the Northern Territory, a CLP opposition that is willing to, you know, throw anything at the government to try to get them to introduce harsher and more punitive youth justice laws. And if you see a government that just doesn't have the mettle to stay the course and to do the right thing, then we are going to see this backflipping just continue. We need governments that have real conviction and that will say we are prepared to stay the course and to introduce these reforms because we know they will work. They just need time.

OSMAN:

Sophie, thank you so much for your time today.

SOPHIE:

No worries, thank you.

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OSMAN:

Also in the news today…

Australians will soon be able to fly into New Zealand without quarantining under new travel arrangements announced yesterday. The travel bubble arrangement will launch on April 18.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the trans-Tasman bubble represented a new chapter in the region's Covid recovery.

And the Reserve Bank of Australia has kept the official cash rate at 0.1 per cent. It’s the fifth RBA meeting in a row where the rate has either been cut or held at record lows.

I’m Osman Faruqi, this is 7am. See ya tomorrow.

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