Australia's record on the world stage is marred by its maltreatment of children in the criminal justice system that's the stark reading in an international report. The human rights watch report highlights the Northern Territory's recent lowering of the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10 and the reversal of a ban on the use of spit-hoods.
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00:00There's a lot of questions being asked internationally about why is it that we are incarcerating
00:08so many children, that we're criminalising them from the age of 10 when they have disabilities,
00:16mental health issues, poverty, a range of trauma, you know, these are children with
00:22a lot of serious problems and we're finding that they're in the criminal justice system.
00:28This report, by the way, was done before the recent Queensland Act that was passed
00:33just before Christmas, which goes even further now, making sentences for children the same
00:40as for adults and removing a provision of detention as a last resort and we are the
00:46only country in the world, I'm advised, who has ever done that, removed detention
00:51as a last resort for children.
00:53We can do better as a country, I'm confident of it, but we won't do better by just continuing
01:00with business as usual, presuming that the states and territories will manage child protection
01:05and youth justice when in fact we're seeing that they're failing to do so.
01:13We need to work together across the federation and make child wellbeing a national priority
01:18for national cabinet.