Tag Archives: Michaelia Cash

Australian Politics

In Australia we still jail children, some as young as 10

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Federal Member for Mayo Rebekha Sharkie introduced a Private Members’ Bill last year, to put pressure on the Government to follow a United Nations recommendation, and raise the age of criminal responsibility in Australia from 10 to 14 years. This would re-align us with most of the developed world.

In November 2019, then Attorney-General of Australia, Christian Porter, was of the opinion that the current system was working well. He went on to state that the bill was highly controversial, because it would mean there would never be any circumstances where a person aged ten to 14 could be held responsible for their actions. That opinion appears to be, at best, wilfully blind.

It is worth noting that a spokesperson for the current federal Attorney-General, Michaelia Cash, said the issue was one for states and territories to decide. Quite a backward step from the Commonwealth, and from the first law officer in the nation.

Porter had worked previously as Attorney-General of W.A. where he must have known that almost 40 per cent of Western Australian youth in detention have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and almost 90 per cent have a neurological impairment.

We are desperate for change, but the Attorneys need more time

This is hard to believe, but in Australia, today, there are over six hundred children, aged between 10 and 13, who are in jail. It is a fact that about 65% of those children are of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) heritage.

If you wanted to consciously set about handicapping a person for life, what better way than to lock them up, separate them from family and friends, take them out of the classroom, and impose the rigors of life in an institution on pre-pubescent children.

This reeks of another ‘stolen generation’ disgrace, and we can’t blame ‘redneck’ police, or consciously racist bureaucrats for this. No, this state of affairs sits squarely on the shoulders of our federal and state attorneys-general.

One of the cornerstones of criminal law in Australia, and other Common Law jurisdictions, is the concept of “mens rea“. The phrase means a guilty mind, and it must be present, to prove intent to commit a crime.

We all know that these children are legally ‘infants’. They cannot vote, or marry, or drive a car, or sign a contract, or consent to sexual activity, but they can commit crimes? We should consider improving their lives, rather than jailing them.

Think back to when you were ten years old. How did you rate when it came to weighing up your options, the consequences and rewards of your intended action, and your willingness to accept the outcome, if there was one. Did you know the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’? How about lawful and unlawful?

The attorneys-general of this great nation have been in a bit of a bind, because they feel that they have not had enough time to consider the matter of whether it is appropriate to continue to lock children up in detention. That is not to mention the 600 who are already there.

In mid-2020 they indicated that more work needed to be done on alternative forms of punishment before they could make their recommendations.

They have just completed another full year of ‘deliberating’. They refuse to answer questions as to what specific work has been undertaken, and by whom, in the past year, to identify adequate processes and services for children who exhibit offending behaviour.

Reasons why change is necessary, now

Professor Judy Cashmore, of the University of Sydney Law School, lists five reasons why it would be a good idea to lift the age of criminal responsibility in Australia:

  1. Most children who offend at these ages (10-13) will “simply grow out of it” with appropriate support, but those who won’t will need an appropriate public health response, rather than justice based;

2. The younger a child is at their first contact with the criminal justice system, the greater their chances of future offending, so at least increasing the age will mitigate the harm to the child;

3. Indigenous children are highly over-represented in this group of children so positive, culturally and age-appropriate responses are critical for these children to reduce this over-representation;

4. It is extremely costly to bring children into juvenile detention – that money urgently needs to go into therapeutic justice re-investment;

5. Raising the age to 14 would bring Australia into line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is time that Australians were again proud of our civic culture, rather than being stuck in a time-warp of ‘old white man’ reaction.

The Morrison Government has a chance to undo some of the reputational damage it has caused to Australia over the last eight years. Raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 is a no-brainer. All thinking Australians seem to be in favour, except for the lawyers in power. We should release the children in custody immediately. Their lives are being trashed as we speak!

So, take a good look at a ten year old kid, and wonder why we are victimising children. To make matters worse, the law is more likely to punish them, if they are Indigenous. Shame on us.

This post has been updated, to reflect changes since it was first released.

Australian Politics

Morrison’s shallow talent pool

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As a general rule, upon election, it usually took Parliamentarians some time to show what they were made of, and gradually those with the best minds, and the greatest capacity, worked their way up through the ranks. In political life that has always meant attaining ministerial appointment. If one was unfortunate enough to be seated on the ‘wrong’ side of the chamber, one gained ‘shadow’ ministerial experience.

Often the Minister, and his or her shadow, continued in the same portfolio, over a period of years. In this way each became expert in the area covered by the job. For example, when the Government was changed by the electorate, the Shadow Minister was able to step into the ministerial role almost seamlessly, and often with shared goals. That approach was known as bi-partisanship.

This served to illustrate the maxim that the Cabinet is there to serve the country, rather than the party. In the best of times the Minister and his or her shadow were able to work together, with the goal of achieving improvement, for the country as a whole. This really came to an end with the Howard Government.

How did Howard change things?

To many Australians John Howard was known as honest, earnest and relatively harmless. But that persona was carefully crafted. His Government was described as ‘mean and tricky’ in a report Howard himself commissioned, from the Liberals’ own president, Shane Stone. Howard was on a mission in 1996 to re-make Australia, into a faux Thatcherite society, and he used the oldest trick in the book – a faux ‘budget emergency’.

Serving as a beacon to Tony Abbott in 2013, Howard ‘manufactured’ his budget emergency, and embarked on a ruthless project to rid his Government of debt, by imposing strict savings on reluctant Ministers, and selling off the country’s silver.

Some of the more notable pieces of silver were the sale of Telstra, and the privatisation of both the Commonwealth Employment Service, and the Aged Care sector. The damage these own goals have caused, has cascaded throughout the years, and continues to cause the country to bleed.

This served Howard in two ways. Firstly he engineered “cabinet solidarity” on solving the ’emergency’, thus mandating even unreasonable savings, and he isolated the so-called ‘wets’, many of whom fought for their portfolios’ funding.

‘Wets’ was another term for moderates, who generally believed in a type of humanistic Conservatism, where they achieved economic goals, while protecting the poor. Some of his best performers were either sidetracked, or actively removed from the parliament, through selective organisational targeting.

The party is of course now stacked with time-serving, narrow, ideologically motivated drones, whose life experience is usually having served as an ‘adviser’ to a parliamentarian hack, or as a lawyer. That does not deepen the gene pool, but it does provide malleable cattle with which to work.

What happened to bi-partisanship?

Cabinet ministers are now chosen on the basis of loyalty to whomever is sitting in the prime ministerial chair. Talent is in such short supply that someone like Michaelia Cash, a former lawyer, is now a cabinet minister. Her portfolio area is Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business. With her unreasoning loathing for all things union, who could she work with, across the aisle? And working at a major law firm, as a taster for small business?

Angus Taylor is a former Rhodes Scholar, and he has worked as a management consultant for twenty years or so. He must know about risk management, or he would not have been employed in management consulting. And yet, in possibly the most important role he will ever be employed in, that of reducing Australia’s emissions in a pre-apocalyptic world, he adheres to the anti-science rhetoric, and apparent obfuscations of a global heating denialist. The only possible explanation for his behaviour is that he is unable to read a risk profile, or he cannot escape the shackles of his denialism.

The Hon Melissa Price MP was Vice President of Legal and Business Development for Crosslands Resources, an iron ore miner, before she was appointed to the Environment Ministry. As Peter Fitzsimons asked on television, “If a million dead fish at Menindee doesn’t attract your attention as the environment minister, what does it take?”

She also approved the Adani Mine’s groundwater plan just days before the 2019 election, although the plan was riddled with errors. It puts her in line to contest the Worst Environment Minister in History Award, with Greg Hunt and Josh Frydenberg also in the running.

Was the Prime Minister joking with these appointments?

One theme runs through this tiny sample of ministerial misfits. It can be read as being the best we can do, with a shallow pool to pick from, or did Morrison actually choose ministers who would so underperform that he could show his contempt for the very areas they represent.

Considering the IPA obsession for small-to-no-government, could this be, like Trump’s, a new low in ministerial commitment, as we head to low-to-no regulation, and really ugly capitalism?

Politics has been called, unkindly, show business for ugly people, but it should not be taken so lightly. Politics is a deadly serious undertaking, because it has real, tangible consequences. That is why it constantly surprises us that politicians think that they have some form of pass, that they will not be judged for their actions. Because their decisions often have real-world consequences.