Queensland election: LNP leader David Crisafulli’s $50m anti-crime canoe camps
Children who wag school will have their phones confiscated and be sent on taxpayer-funded camps to canoe and learn coding under a LNP plan to drive down youth crime rates in Queensland.
Children who wag school will have their phones confiscated and be sent on taxpayer-funded camps to canoe and learn coding under a Liberal National Party plan to drive down youth crime rates in Queensland.
Youths who engage in “risky behaviours” – such as graffiti, skipping school or substance abuse – could be sent to nine new residential programs across the state at a cost of $50m.
LNP leader David Crisafulli said the program would operate on a referral basis from schools, police, child safety and parents and deliver programs of between one to three weeks where children’s phones would be taken off them.
Only children aged 10 to 15 years who have not attended court before will be eligible to attend the camps which will offer sporting and skills courses – such as abseiling and cooking – as well as cultural programs and volunteering.
“This kind of program has never been rolled out on this scale anywhere in the country, and we are determined to turn young people around before a lifetime of crime,” Mr Crisafulli said.
“The focus will be on education, discipline, counselling, training and employment, above all, consequences for actions, good and bad.”
Mr Crisafulli made the announcement in the far north Queensland electorate of Mulgrave, held by retiring Labor Speaker Curtis Pitt on a margin of 12.24 per cent. He visited the Southside Comets football club in Edmonton, and inspected the clubhouse after it had been broken into.
Premier Steven Miles said the LNP’s revival of a decade-old failed policy shows the party is out of ideas in their “crusade to exploit victims of crime for political benefit”.
“If they don’t want to keep being compared to the government in 2012, they should stop looking like the government from 2012,” Mr Miles said.
“Everyone should go back and look at what the audit report said about (Newman government Attorney-General now LNP deputy leader) Jarrod Bleijie’s boot camps and what a great failure they were ….in fact, everyone since 2015 has treated Jarrod Bleijie’s boot camps as little more than a joke.
“The fact they’ve re-announced them today, I think, points to how shallow their ideas are.”
Boot camps for criminal children were trialled by the Newman government in 2013 in Cairns and on the Gold Coast. The LNP says its new plan would only apply to children who have not been charged with a criminal offence or been before a court.
Mr Miles appeared at Redlands Hospital, in the eastern Brisbane bayside LNP seat of Oodgeroo, to announce $1.6bn to bolster the stage two expansion of the public hospital. The commitment will double the number of beds being added to 376 beds, in addition to 23 acute mental health beds, 78 emergency department treatment places and six operating theatres.
“Our population is growing rapidly and to meet the health needs of that growing population we need to grow our hospitals too,” the Premier said.
Mr Miles was flanked by Labor candidate for Oodgeroo Irene Henley, as well as Labor MPs for the surrounding electorates: Kim Richards (Redlands, 3.9 per cent) and Don Brown (Capalaba, 9.81 per cent).
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