Nationals Leader David Littleproud is pushing for the removal of the civil rights of child offenders, with commentators suggesting racist allusions. Melissa Marsden writes.
WHILE PRIME MINISTER Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton faced off in a debate on Sky News, Nationals Leader David Littleproud was in the electorate of Cowper on the New South Wales north coast.
Littleproud, who has previously said young people who commit crimes should be sent to regional areas to reduce numbers in juvenile detention, has gone further, arguing that children who have been convicted of a crime ‘don’t deserve civil rights’.
The Nationals Leader said:
“When a community doesn’t feel safe, you have to act, and you have to make sure there’s a deterrent and a consequence.”
Claiming that his goal is to rehabilitate youth offenders, Littleproud said a stint in the regions may be what is needed to solve youth crime:
“...we’re going back to outback camps where we are rebuilding these young people with a life skill. Not putting them behind barbed wire but sending them to remote places, giving them a skill and purpose in life.”
Littleproud went as far as to question the advice of trained professionals who have consistently criticised the nation’s tough youth justice policies:
We have got to a point in society where I get all the criminologists and everybody talking about civil rights. We have hit a tipping point where the civil rights of an individual need to be put aside for the civil rights of the community.
If you talk to police, they’ll tell you they’re criminals. We need to give them a purpose in life and worth. Know they are valued and they can contribute to our society because we’ll invest in their skills and take them away and put them in an environment where they can be a better human being and come back to society without society worried about them.
Australia Institute reporter Amy Remeikis criticised Littleproud’s comments, arguing that his language was ‘the message that conservative talk back loves, but it is not borne out by the evidence’.
“And what he's not saying, but we all know he means, is Indigenous children,” said Remeikis.
On the Australia Institute Live Blog, Remeikis said the Opposition Leader ‘didn’t talk about the systemic issues of poverty and civil injustice’.
Indigenous Australians have consistently been identified as a vulnerable group in society.
Last year, Littleproud was quoted saying that youth crime would magically disappear by taking kids as far away from major cities as possible:
“We need to go back to... outback camps, 200 or 300 kilometres from towns. You don’t need barbed wire – if they want to run away, they have to dodge the king browns [snakes] and wild dogs – but every morning they’re up with a purpose.”
In 2023, Western Australian regional Indigenous organisation Wunan Foundation proposed a new cultural approach to youth justice that would see offenders given the opportunity to seek out positive opportunities.
Executive chairperson Ian Trust said the sentencing measure would likely see young offenders embark on a trek in the bush with cultural mentors:
It is about putting them on a different trajectory.
Opening up opportunities for them to do things in their life, and show that they do have real potential in something else, and how to develop that potential.
According to the official Parliament website:
- About 30% of Indigenous households are in income poverty, which indicates that over 120,000 Indigenous people are living below the poverty line.
- Approximately 70% of young Indigenous adults (aged 20-24 years), are not fully engaged with work or education.
- Approximately 50% of Indigenous adults are reliant on some form of welfare payment and for young people (aged 15 to 24 years), the proportion is only slightly lower.
In 2023, the Liberal Party famously opposed the Federal Voice to Parliament.
Dean Parkin, director of the Yes Campaign alliance, said the Liberal Party had “turned its back” on Indigenous people.
Whilst there is no cut and dry fix to addressing Indigenous inequality in Australia, more needs to be done to understand the social, cultural and economic factors affecting Indigenous lives.
In an election year, the estimated national rate of Indigenous enrolment now sits at 94.1%.
The number of Indigenous Australians on the electoral roll as of 30 June 2023 is estimated to be 534,209.
Melissa Marsden is a freelance journalist and PhD candidate at Curtin University. You can follow Melissa on Twitter @MelMarsden96, on Bluesky @melissamarsdenphd or via Melissa's website, Framing the Narrative.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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