Let’s have adult debate about Qld youth justice problem

Annastacia Palaszczuk doesn’t want a probe into Queensland’s youth crime problem because she’ll worry the LNP will seize on any negatives and use them against Labor in the election, writes Jessica Marszalek.

Beattie government minister Robert Schwarten made one of the most well-considered contributions to the youth justice debate last week that we’ve seen in a while.

In a column for The Courier-Mail, he wrote of the complexities of youth crime as he told the story of the kid who stole his wife’s car and later killed his own brother in yet another joy ride while on parole.

With a searing honesty too often missing from politics, he recognised that tough legislation would not fix the problem, just as opposition calls for ministers to resign won’t.

Instead, he proposes an all-party standing parliamentary committee inquiry into youth crime.

But, of course, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk won’t want to do that.

Robert Schwarten, in a The Courier-Mail column, wrote of the complexities of youth crime as he told the story of the kid who stole his wife’s car and later killed his own brother in yet another joy ride while on parole

She’ll worry it will cost her government too much politically, that the LNP will seize on any negatives and use them against Labor in the upcoming election.

But that’s the wrong take on this.

Voters already think the government has a youth justice problem.

According to this paper’s latest polling, they already think the LNP is the party best placed to fix it.

People who lean to the right of politics think Labor isn’t cracking down hard enough, while many who lean left don’t think they’re doing enough in the prevention space.

Labor is already well and truly losing the conversation on youth justice. So why not attempt to control it?

What’s happening and why? Which policies and programs are working and which aren’t?

What else might work? What extra resources are needed?

Of course, another added benefit may be to find some actual solutions to this mess.

That’s accepting that governments exist to govern, rather than just to win elections.

Many young offenders are the children of intergenerational crime, drugs, domestic violence, homelessness, neglect, poor education, mental-health issues and trauma.

Both the government and opposition owe us evidence-based policies. Both have been lacking.

The facts are that child safety, education and youth justice policies are all inextricably linked.

Kids do not wake up one day, read the Youth Justice Act and decide to steal a car because the penalties aren’t harsh enough.

Many are the children of intergenerational crime, drugs, domestic violence, homelessness, neglect, poor education, mental-health issues and trauma.

I’m not excusing it. It’s just a fact.

Drug-addled parents try to sell their kids, they don’t feed them or wash them because they are alcoholics, families live among animal faeces and drug paraphernalia and domestic violence is normal.

They live in a different world to what most of us know.

Palaszczuk says that parents need to take more responsibility for child criminals, and that’s true.

Voters already think Annastacia Palaszczuk’s government has a youth justice problem. Picture: Dan Peled/NCA Newswire

But more than a quarter of Queensland teens in youth detention come from out-of-home care.

That means the state is acting as their parent.

And we know we can always do better in child safety.

The revelations from so many cases tell us so. The people who work in this space tell us so.

Yes, there are politics at play here and governing is hard.

But people don’t care about that.

They do want law-and-order protections.

But people are also capable of understanding that nothing gets fixed without better dealing with the kind of trauma that sets these kids on a path of self-destruction.

Don’t we want to do better here?

It is not black and white. It is not all three-word slogans.

We are all capable of seeing the grey if people will show us.

We are the adults here.

We should have an adult debate.

Jessica Marszalek is The Courier-Mail’s State Political Editor