David Crisafulli aims to deliver key election promise of ‘adult crime, adult time’ laws before Christmas

New Queensland Premier David Crisafulli’s controversial ‘adult crime, adult time’ legislation will be introduced to parliament this week and is expected to become law before Christmas.

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli and Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie at Parliament House on Monday. Picture: Richard Walker

New Queensland Premier David Crisafulli’s controversial “adult crime, adult time” legislation will be introduced to state parliament this week and is expected to become law before Christmas with the support of the opposition.

Harsher sentences for young criminals will be top of the new Liberal National Party government’s agenda as parliament returns for the first time since the October state election, with laws to reinstate the productivity commission also expected this week.

“We cannot go to Christmas with the broken youth justice system we have,” Mr Crisafulli said. “We promised (voters) that that would be law, and we promised them it would be law by Christmas, so there’s a lot of hard work to do in the next couple of weeks.”

The laws will mandate that juveniles who commit serious crimes – such as murder, manslaughter and home invasions – are sentenced as adults.

Proposed laws will also ensure a child’s criminal history will carry into adulthood and force magistrates to consider all police cautions, restorative justice agreements and breaches of supervised release ­orders when sentencing young ­offenders.

Opposition Leader Steven Miles said Labor was unlikely to oppose tougher sentences for juveniles, under which children as young as 12 could be jailed for life if convicted of murder.

Members of Queensland Premier David Crisafulli’s government at Parliament House in Brisbane on Monday. Picture: Richard Walker

“When, if it comes to increased sentences we’ll have to see the detail, but we also accept that that was really the only policy that the LNP took to the election,” he said.

Criticising Mr Crisafulli’s youth justice crackdown as a “policy of despair, not a policy of hope”, criminal defence lawyer Bill Potts argued the new government should be focused on the causes of crime over locking up young offenders.

“That’s not to say that children can’t go to jail, or that children should not go to jail, it just means that, unless we address the causes of crime … we are essentially consigning our children to the dark satanic mills of the justice system,” he said. “We cannot jail our way out of problems.”

Queensland Law Society president Rebecca Fogerty said the impact on the state’s criminal justice system was unclear, with the government yet to release draft legislation. “The devil here is in the detail, and given that the legislation cuts across multiple acts … the prospect of unintended consequences is high, but without having the bill in front of us, it’s hard to say,” she said.

Ms Fogerty said the QLS was also concerned the government planned to rush through the legislation before Christmas.

“There is insufficient time for proper scrutiny and there’s the possibility that these laws will be rushed through parliament without proper consultation with experts to ensure that there are no unintended consequences and that these laws are not oppressive in their reach,” she said.

Led by the first LNP government in nearly a decade, the 58th parliament will be formally opened by Governor Jeannette Young on Wednesday, with 24 new MPs sworn in this week.