This was published 4 years ago
Age of criminal responsibility to remain at 10 until at least 2021
By Nick Ralston and Michaela Whitbourn
The age of criminal responsibility in Australia will remain at 10 for at least another year after the nation's attorneys-general said more work needed to be done to determine alternative ways to deal with young offenders.
Legal experts, doctors and justice groups have been part of a national campaign to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 to bring it in line with other jurisdictions around the world.
NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman is yet to take a stance on the issue.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The issue was discussed at Monday's meeting of the Council of Attorneys-General but NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman said any decision had been deferred to 2021 to allow a working group, led by the Western Australian justice department, to examine alternatives to imprisonment.
Mr Speakman, who is yet to take a stance on the issue, said the onus was on those wanting to raise the age to make that case but at this stage "we are yet to be convinced".
"If there is a move to raise the age of criminal responsibility you have to identify what is the alternative for children who would otherwise be subject to the criminal justice process," Mr Speakman said.
"And that is where further work needs to be done. What are the therapeutic interventions the behaviour interventions, the social support, the educational interventions that offending children need if they are not going to be dealt with by the criminal justice system?"
There were almost 600 children aged 10 to 13 in detention in Australia last financial year. More than 60 per cent were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children. The Council of Attorneys-General, made up of attorneys-general from the Australian government and all states and territories, agreed in 2018 it would be appropriate to consider raising the age from 10 to 14.
Mr Speakman said in NSW there were currently 200 young people in youth justice centres, down by a third from five years ago. The youngest offenders in the NSW corrections system were three offenders who are aged 13 with no-one aged between 10 to 12 in youth justice.
He said he expected when the working group reported back next year to the Council of Attorneys-General a decision, one way or another, would have to be made.
"I am driven by community safety, community safety is the most important criteria in all of this. Community safety doesn't necessarily mean though locking people up; there is a considerable amount of evidence that the best way to treat young offenders is therapeutically to avoid reoffending.
"That said there is understandable community concern when, for example, 13 year olds in far north Queensland are alleged to have raped a minor, and understandable community concern that kids may feel they can get away with things if there isn't some criminal sanction attached."
On Monday, attorneys-general from across the country agreed with the recommendations of a NSW-led working group to overhaul national defamation laws, including to introduce a new defence to protect public interest journalism.
The new public interest defence, modelled on British laws, will require a defendant to prove both that the statement was on a matter of public interest and the defendant reasonably believed that its publication was in the public interest.
Mr Speakman said it was "an historic day for press freedom and freedom of speech in Australia".
There had been "extensive consultation on this defence" which had first used the language of a New Zealand defence before the British law was adopted instead, he said.
Mr Speakman said the courts were "clogged" with trivial claims and a new threshold of serious harm, also modelled on British law, would be introduced to "weed out" trivial claims before a trial.
The law would also be amended to stop the one-year limitation period on bringing a defamation action restarting every time a person clicks on an online story.
The revised laws are also expected to rein in defamation damages payouts by noting the cap on damages for non-economic loss, currently $407,500, is reserved for "the most serious case of defamation".
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