Qld elections: Liberal, Labor ‘law and order’ push is thinly disguised racism

A week out from the October 26 Queensland election, Liberal National Party (LNP) leader David Crisafulli has doubled down on his campaign promise of “mandatory isolation periods” for children in detention who assault detention staff.

For months, he has been scaremongering about a supposed youth crime crisis. “Adult crime, adult time” is one of the LNP’s most prominent slogans, plastered over billboards everywhere even though experts have dismissed the idea that minors should be tried as adults as ineffective.

Queensland Council of Civil Liberties vice president Terry O’Gorman has repeatedly said Queensland’s juvenile justice system needs to be fixed.

He is pushing for the huge amount of money spent on building juvenile jails and keeping juveniles in jail to be diverted to resources to help families having difficulties with their children, so they are not taken into the juvenile justice system in the first place.

Queensland Law Society president Rebecca Fogerty has said the LNP’s policy would not fix the problem of youth crime.

But even the idea that there is a “crisis” is dubious. Queensland police data shows that youth crime rates in Queensland are at near-record lows.

The Guardian reported in August that youth crime had “consistently decreased” in Queensland over two decades. The number of child offenders reached its lowest level during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing slightly in 2022–23 and then dropping again in 2023–24.

John Robertson, a former president of the children’s court, said the statistics “completely refute” the notion that there is a major youth crime wave. Youth crime rates are currently 18% lower than in 2012–13.

Labor has joined the LNP’s scaremongering, twice suspending Queensland’s Human Rights Act to implement more punitive polices. It even removed the international law principle of “detention as a last resort” from the Youth Justice Act.

Labor claims its policies are the “toughest in the nation”.

This racist fearmongering is not limited to Queensland. The Northern Territory’s newly elected Country Liberal Party (CLP) passed “tough on crime” laws on October 17, lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10.

Victorian Labor has reneged on a promise to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 — as recommended by the United Nations — instead raising it to 12 from 10.

NSW Labor has also introduced harsher bail laws for children between 14–18 years old, meaning more First Nations children will inevitably come into contact with the criminal justice system.

First Nations youth will be the biggest victims of these policies due to systematic racism. About 60% of incarcerated youth across the country are Indigenous.

Debbie Kilroy, Sisters Inside CEO and long-time campaigner against prisons, has criticised the NT government’s decision, saying the policy will only deepen harm to children and society.

Kilroy said children’s prisons are violent places designed to punish and surveil kids; they do not address the root causes of their behaviour.

She said the answers can be found in changing the system that puts them in prison in the first place. A Senate inquiry, initiated by the Australian Greens in September, is now looking into why so many First Nations children are being imprisoned. A report is due by the end of November.

The federal government’s own department shows that about 3 in 5 (63%) young people aged 10–17 in detention were First Nations people, while First Nations people in this age group make up just 5.7% of the general population.

On an average night over 4 years from June 2019 to June 2023, the rate and number of young First Nations people aged 10–17 in detention has been increasing and the number of non-Indigenous young people of the same age in detention has been decreasing, since September 2020.

Labor, federally, claims to want to close the gap. But without seriously addressing the cost of housing and the general cost-of-living crises, nothing will change.

Queensland Labor’s policies to extend the 50 cent public transport fares indefinitely, provide a $1000 electricity rebate on power bills and free primary school lunches are welcome. But, as former Greens councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan said, they are still very modest. They are cover for Labor’s refusal to propose any structural change.

Labor is widely expected to lose the election, even though the poll margins are narrowing.

The Greens are the major party proposing progressive reforms including: an increase in mining royalties to fund public services; 75% public ownership of large-scale electricity assets by 2030, with the goal of 100% public ownership; ending state subsidies to new coal and gas; and supporting women’s rights to choose abortion as policy, not a conscience decision.

The Socialist Alliance is not contesting this Queensland election and recommends a vote for the Greens.

[Alex Bainbridge is the convenor of the Socialist Alliance in Queensland and is a member of its national executive.]