Howard fails to take action over jailed aboriginal children

Something is rotten in the state of justice in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. In the past few months, a 16-year-old boy has been jailed for almost 24 hours for stealing 40 cents from a telephone box so he could pay for his train fare home and a 17-year-old boy with a mental age of eight, has been jailed for 3 months, again for stealing.

The worst case saw a 15-year-old boy commit suicide in a Darwin juvenile detention centre after serving 26 days of a 28day sentence for stealing some textas and paints.

What unites these boys is that they all come from severely disadvantaged backgrounds and are all Aboriginal.

In the case of all but the 16-year-old, what put them in jail were mandatory sentencing laws passed by the Prime Minister John Howard’s political allies in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. These ‘three strikes and you are in’ laws mean youths from the age of 15 years, convicted of a third property offence, must be given jail no matter how minor the offence or what extenuating circumstances may apply.

In the Northern Territory, you can expect to be treated as an adult from the age of 17. Then mandatory sentencing laws will see you get 14 days for your first property offence, 90 days for a second and one year for a third.

So it was recently, that a 21 -year-old man with no previous offences went to jail for 28 days for breaking a window in his own house. He had been reported to the police by his angry mother, who had no idea he would get more than a stem warning and was shocked and mortified when she discovered jail was the

only option.

In another recent Northern Territory case a 22-year-old (who like the 21-year-old was Aboriginal) was sentenced to a year in jail for stealing a box of biscuits on Christmas day because he

was hungry.

Since the beginning of February, Prime Minister John Howard, has been weathering a storm of protest over his refusal to step in and overturn the mandatory sentencing legislation.

While Howard himself, doubts the value of the laws enacted by his Liberal colleagues, he justifies his failure to act by his unwillingness to touch that Liberal sacred cow ‘States Rights’ (to make laws without Federal intervention).

He also appears to have taken notice of recent opinion polls that show voters in Western Australia and the Northern Territory support mandatory sentencing.

Jail particularly for young people, can lead to broken lives and suicide in jail is, unfortunately, a not infrequent response of people who feel their future and their nation has nothing to offer them. That the Prime Minister is willing to leave children vulnerable in the name of a political sacred cow is appalling.

While mandatory sentencing applies to all offenders, it falls disproportionately on the Aboriginal community.

It is this aspect of the legislation that prompted some of the most damning criticism of Mr Howard.

Four of the most senior judges in New South Wales, Justices James Wood, Tony Fitzgerald, Margaret Beazley and Paul Stein took the unusual step of writing to a Sydney newspaper.

Their views were devastating: ‘Racism and injustice are evil, particularly when they have popular support. It is unjust to imprison offenders without regard to their personal circumstances, life experience, prospects of rehabilitation or other, more suitable, sentences,’ the Justices said.

“It is racist (and cowardly) to enact and implement laws which apply most harshly to a disempowered minority. It might be thought clever politics but it is not leadership to pander to ignorance and prejudice,” the judges concluded with sting firmly aimed at Mr Howard. John Howard’s leadership on Aboriginal issues is now under serious question.

His refusal to say ‘sorry’ to the stolen generations of Aboriginal children who were taken away from their families, has stymied the reconciliation process. After 8 years work by the National Reconciliation Council, Mr Howard has now abandoned the December 2001 deadline for a document of reconciliation and said that the process will take years.

These moves contrast strongly with the Prime Minister’s passionate statement in his victory speech after the 1998 election in which he said: “I also want to commit myself very genuinely to the cause of true reconciliation with the Aboriginal people by the centenary of Federation”. John Howard’s handling of Aboriginal issues is now set to become an international issue and, during April, he will face a tough time in parliament.

The Senate is angry that Mr Howard gagged debate in the House of Representatives on its bill to overturn mandatory sentencing and is considering the unprecedented step of refusing to debate bills passed by the lower house.

In the international arena, Mr Howard is facing embarrassing disclosures about the way Australia lobbied the UN to remove findings that clearly show Australia’s mandatory sentencing laws are in breach of its international obligations to children, to prevent race discrimination and to uphold human rights.

Human Rights Commissioner, Chris Sidotti, says the Howard efforts on the UN report and its claim that mandatory sentencing is a purely ‘internal issue’ put Australia in the same class as notorious human rights violators such as China, Burma and Malaysia. With the intense international scrutiny that goes with the Olympics, Mr Howard can only expect the cacophony of criticism to get louder. ■

Jemima Garrett