Mandatory Sentencing Laws Offend The Very Soul Of Justice
Phillip Adams is the National Patron of the Australian Section of Defence for Children International
An extract of this piece appeared in DCI-Australia’s Australian Children’s Rights News (No. 24)
Australia has reached a moral crossroad over mandatory sentencing. Not before time but not soon enough to have prevented the death of one of our children.
Johnno was not just one of “their” children –an Aboriginal child, a Northern Territory child. If being Australian means anything at all, he was our
child. And he was sacrificed on the senseless pyre of contemptible laws.
They are Australian laws that break international laws. Neither you nor I as citizens of Australia can choose to obey the laws of our State or Territory but ignore the
laws of the Commonwealth. We don’t have the right to pick and choose. The same is true for national governments. They are citizens of the globe and its laws.
Our Government actually had more choice than you or I or Johnno. It chose to be solemnly bound by the international laws that are breached by mandatory
sentencing. That choice was made on behalf of all citizens and all governments of Australia after many years of public discussion and inter-governmental debate. It was a decision that our
Constitution says can only be made by the Commonwealth Government. With that decision, came a responsibility upon Canberra to ensure that our domestic laws don’t breach our international
obligations.
The power to legislate away both the Northern Territory and Western Australian laws is in the hands of Commonwealth Parliamentarians (and thankfully in the conscience of some
at least).
Technically, it’s as simple as that and the time has come for the Commonwealth to honour the promise it made to us and to the world.
It is morally simple too. Mandatory sentencing laws offend the very soul of justice. Blind retribution is not the Australian way. It is an affront to the fair
go we pride about ourselves. How do we explain to our children that justice means a year in jail over biscuits? Try it. Then try to explain how we have come such a long way since convicts
were dispatched to our shores for similarly heinous crimes.
It is politics that creates the illusion of complexity. Out west and up north, the hang ‘em high sheriffs are trying to face down a showdown with blatant
balderdash.
Richard Court can’t be serious to claim that his laws went uncriticised at the Senate hearings in Perth. If Denis Burke believes that all his advice is that his
laws don’t breach international law, then he is Stone deaf or unfit for office.
Meanwhile in Canberra, the big game is about naked and desperate electoral anxiety about federal votes in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
Men, women and children of ethical fibre are being forced to clamour for the obvious while our national leaders – who are actually there to lead – are treating
principle as if it were loose change in their back pocket to be reluctantly doled out to the most persistent of beggars.
The longer the party bosses hang back from a clear and unequivocal stance, the more each of us is demeaned.
And a bit like the old saying about pregnancy, it can’t happen in halves. Over-riding only the Territory law would be a sham tip of the hat to justice.
Must we wait for another Johnno to die? Worse still, must it take a white Johnno?
|
