Demonstration outside Parliament House, Canberra, 17 February 2000, 12.30 - 1.15pm
(organised or supported by National Children’s and Youth Law Centre, Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation ACT, Defence for Children International.)
Helen Bayes represented DCI and this is what she said:
Thank you to the Ngunnawal People for their welcome and to everyone for coming today.
The Demonstrations which are happening around Australia today are not simply an expression of our grief and despair at the death of another fine young Aboriginal boy, or our outrage at the fact
that this happened while the boy was in the care of the NT Juvenile Detention Centre.
We have come to voice our hope - our demand - that mandatory sentencing laws in the NT and WA will be abolished for ever.
They have no justice, no mercy, and do nothing to bring about positive change in a young offender’s life. They take away a fundamental role of the court - to weigh all the factors and find
a balanced response to the offence, the offender and the offended against.
Mandatory sentencing is unacceptable to Australians, once they understand the way it works.
Many organisations and individuals have been working since MS was introduced, for 3 years, to educate the general public about the tragic impact these laws have on young people, especially in the
indigenous communities. Many people have listened and changed their views, and now we have to bear this tragic death, we are electrified by the tragedy which was foreseen.
I want to thank these people, especially the Territorians for Effective Sentencing, who have been working so hard for three years, often with little hope of change.
If you read the Convention on the Rights of the Child, you cannot fail to see that it is against the letter and the spirit of the Convention. The human dignity of children and young people must
be respected. Their best interests must be a primary consideration. They must be listened to. And above all, children who are in conflict with the law must be treated in ways which
promote their sense of dignity and worth, and aims at their reintegration in society.
There is no higher priority for the world, I say to Richard Court, to Dennis Burke and to John Howard, than to protect human rights. There is no higher priority for us as Australians than to
protect the human rights of our fellow Australians.
The laws in WA are as fundamentally wrong as those in the NT. Children as young as are being sentenced to 12 months detention, thousands of miles away from home, after a third sentencing
event. The laws may be a bit more selective than the NT but the impact on a young person is potentially as bad or worse.
Mandatory sentencing is an admission of failure of a government to address the reasons behind petty thieving and other property offences - poverty, hunger, nowhere to go, and serious problems in the
child’s family environment.
This failure, and the human rights breaches they represent, demean us all, and on Australia as a nation. We call on the leaders of all political parties in the National Parliament, and the
independents, to show moral leadership and to pass the Human Rights Bill without delay so that it applies equally to all States and Territories, as a fundamental human rights issue.
If they cannot muster such leadership, we call on them, as a bare minimum, to declare a conscience vote.
Our protests against inaction will not stop until this is achieved. To finance further actions we are passing around buckets and asking for your donations. Please give generously.
We are planning to hold information stalls. Please make yourself known to me or to the other organisers if you would like to help our campaign.
Helen Bayes
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