Pat Turner’s Labor backflip fears as Indigenous Gap remains
Aboriginal leader Pat Turner says she is ‘very worried’ by Labor’s decision to break with its national platform and introduce minimum mandatory sentencing for some offences.
The Aboriginal leader closest to the Albanese government post-referendum, Pat Turner, says she is “very worried” by Labor’s decision to break with its national platform and introduce minimum mandatory sentencing for some offences.
As Ms Turner’s Coalition of Peaks played a front-and-centre role during Anthony Albanese’s Closing the Gap update on Monday – and is set to continue to doing so for Indigenous policymaking more broadly – the pre-eminent leader said she believed the issue of crime would likely play a central role in the upcoming election.
The government’s move last week to introduce mandatory sentences of one to six years for terror offences breached Labor’s decades-long opposition to the concept of mandatory minimum sentencing.
The party once more enshrined into its platform at the 2023 national conference its opposition to mandatory sentencing because of the belief the measure “does not reduce crime but does undermine the independence of the judiciary, leads to unjust outcomes, and is often discriminatory in practice”.
Ms Turner, the lead convener of the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations, said she was concerned by Labor’s sudden backflip and adoption of the policy.
“I’m very worried,” she said.
Labor MPs were split over the Prime Minister’s decision to introduce mandatory minimum sentencing, with many telling The Australian that the “political reality” and spate of violence necessitated the move, while others maintained their fierce opposition to the concept regardless of the current context.
Crime prevention has been an increasing feature of government and opposition policy, and Mr Albanese followed Peter Dutton’s move to visit Alice Springs earlier this month, where he announced more than $800m in funding for policing and women’s safety among other initiatives to close the gap in the Northern Territory.
Mr Albanese went on to announce a further $3m for crime prevention measures in the Ballina, Byron and Tweed shire councils later on the same day.
Ms Turner said the issue of crime was “an easy target” for major parties to campaign on, but urged for a more nuanced understanding and response to the problem.
“Why is there so much crime happening in a time? I think drugs and alcohol have a lot to do with it and fuel it, and a lot of crime is family violence, and far too many women dying at the hands of their partners across the country,” she said.
“I think that … with all the family violence that police have to attend to, (it) means resources are being diverted from what they would normally do in terms of doing a street run, or, you know, having a presence around the place.”
The Indigenous leader also said there was a clear lack of mental health services, leaving people with mental illness “not being treated consistently and properly”, along with an unacceptable rate of children in out of home care and Indigenous youth being held in remand while yet to be charged with any offence.
Coalition of Peaks deputy lead convener Scott Wilson also cautioned against blunt instruments and mandatory measures being used to address crime rates, whether that be forcing people onto a cashless debit card or introducing mandatory minimum sentencing.
“What would work is if people voluntarily are able to go on those sorts of schemes (like the cashless debit card),” Mr Wilson said.
“When it’s mandatory, which comes back to the whole thing about mandatory sentencing, then people will push back.”
The intervention came as Labor handed down the latest Closing the Gap report and implementation plan, which highlighted the fact that more than one third of Australian prisoners are Indigenous, while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up just 2 per cent of Australia’s population.
Despite plans to address the overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in the justice system and close the gap in other key areas, only five of the 19 targets are currently on track to being met.
“Today is about facing up to what’s not working and learning from what is,” Mr Albanese said in parliament.
“The road ahead is not easy, but crucially there is a road, and we keep adding to it.”
Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy said she would “like to think there will be some changes in those reports and in that data” in coming months, after the government announced on Monday a series of new measures it would take to close the gap in 2025, including capping prices for 30 essential items in nearly 80 remote supermarkets; building a “nutrition workforce” by upskilling staff in those remote stores; and ramping up prevention, early intervention and response services to address domestic violence.
Senator McCarthy also revealed the government had decided to “step in” and work much more closely with the Coalition of Peaks and state and territory ministers.
“When I came into the role six months ago, I had heard the calls by the Coalition of Peaks for the federal government to step in, and that’s what I’ve done, to work much closer with the Coalition of Peaks and also with state and territory ministers,” Senator McCarthy said.
“I thought it was the right thing to do, to reach out across the parliament and have regular meetings with the opposition all in one room along with Pat Turner with me. The Teals have come, One Nation has come, independents have come and the opposition has come.”
The bringing together of all parties to discuss the best way forward for Indigenous affairs with Ms Turner follows the loss of the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum in October 2023, which would have established an advisory body in Canberra to meet with all political parties and help craft Indigenous policy.
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