Youth justice could be the undoing of the Gunner Government, writes Matt Cunningham

ITS harshest critics say it was timed to destroy the CLP Government. But the Four Corners report into youth justice – and the Royal Commission it prompted – could prove the undoing of the Gunner Government, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

Youth justice could be the undoing of the Gunner Government, writes Matt Cunningham

• Royal Commission sparked youth crime explosion: Lambley
• Royal Commission left NT Government an impossible mission
• Youths smash up popular cafe, library in broad daylight

ITS harshest critics say it was timed to destroy the CLP Government. But the Four Corners report into youth justice in the Northern Territory – and the Royal Commission it prompted – could also prove the undoing of the Gunner Government.

The impossible task that Commission set for Labor was on full display this week.

It started with the piece written by Criminal Lawyers Association President Marty Aust in the Sunday Territorian.

He called on Territory politicians to avoid a “tough on crime” election campaign and urged the NT Government to implement all of the recommendations from the Royal Commission. That’s never going to happen.

The Government has already walked away from many of the recommendations, including lifting the age of criminal responsibility and deciding to build its new youth justice centre next to the adult prison at Holtze.

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While these decisions see the government smashed by the left-wing lawyers who played a primary role in the Royal Commission, it has still stayed the course with much of the Commission’s advice.

For this, it is attacked by law-abiding families and businesses who feel the pendulum has tipped to a point where the victims of crime have fewer rights than the offenders.

That sentiment has been bubbling away for a couple of years but it reached a crescendo this week after the shocking incident at Mosko’s Market cafe in Palmerston.

Four girls – aged between 13 and 14 – assaulted a security guard and then smashed the cafe’s windows in broad daylight. Staff and customers were terrified with some taking refuge in the library next door.

It wasn’t the first senseless act of vandalism committed in recent years but this one was caught on camera.

A bit like the vision that sparked the Royal Commission, it’s impossible to watch this footage and not be shocked. The store’s owner pleads with the girls to stop but they ignore him and smash the shop’s front window.

The next day police informed us they had charged four girls with assaulting a worker, damaging property and going armed in public.

Those girls, police said, would be “considered for youth diversion”.

The reaction to that news would suggest this is a move badly out of step with community expectations.

Plenty of reasonable people have watched that video and struggled to conclude how such a brazen act of vandalism can result in so little consequence for the perpetrators.

Among them was the cafe’s manager, Daniela Ochoa.

“I’m frustrated. I come from Colombia where crime is visible so I’m not scared, but it’s upsetting that nothing happens,” she said.

“Where are people to help, where’s the justice system?”

In fact, the justice system did exactly what the Royal Commission asked of it.

Consider recommendation 25.9, which says “the definition of the ‘serious offences’ that exclude a young person from eligibility for diversion be reviewed, with a view to removing preclusion from diversion for less serious offending.”

Smashing shop windows, assaulting security guards and going armed in public are now clearly considered to be “less serious offending”.

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Or recommendation 25.12 which says “the Northern Territory Commissioner of Police amend Police General Order – Youth Pre-Court Diversion to remove the requirement that a child or young person must admit to committing an offence when an officer is considering them for diversion and require instead that the child or young person ‘does not deny’ the offence.”

So the girls charged over the recent incident in Palmerston didn’t even have to admit committing an offence to avoid going to court.

There no doubt the Territory’s youth justice system had issues in 2016.

It was unacceptable that successive governments had neglected the system so badly that corrections staff were forced to keep six violent, high-risk young offenders for 17 days in the dungeon-like conditions of the Behavioural Management Unit at the old Don Dale Detention Centre.

But the reaction to this failure has been a massive over-correction that has left police powerless and victims feeling forgotten.

Like an out-of-control driver, we’ve pulled the steering wheel so hard that we’re still going to crash, it just might be on the other side of the road.

The Commission must accept much of the blame for this.

It’s greatest failure was to gloss over the issues of child protection that inevitably lead to youth delinquency.

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But its other significant oversight was its failure to hear from the victims of crime.

It made time for grandstanding speeches from lawyers and a trip to New Zealand.

But it had no time for people like Todd Trainer, who was attacked with a claw hammer by a 16-year-old during an invasion at his Malak home in 2008 while his wife breastfed their three-week-old son.

Or Adam Sargent, stabbed up to 10 times while shielding his four-month-old daughter as two youths attacked him in Alawa in 2010.

Those voices were never heard at the Royal Commission and they’ve been shown little consideration in its more than 200 recommendations.

They will, however, get a say at the ballot box this August.

If that results in another jerk of the steering wheel and a return to a tougher political approach to law and order, the Royal Commission and its boosters might want to consider the role their own omissions played in creating that path.