Law reform puts ACT teens ‘at mercy of crime groups’

The passage of new ACT legislation increasing the minimum age of criminal responsibility sparks warnings children could be manipulated by crime groups.

ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The ACT has become the first jurisdiction in the nation to increase the minimum age of criminal ­responsibility to 14, igniting concerns that young teenagers could be “manipulated by adult offenders or serious organised crime syndicates”.

ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury said the shake-up in the nation’s capital was aimed at preventing young people from “ending up in the criminal justice system”.

The ACT legislative assembly passed the bill on Wednesday afternoon, with the Liberals unsuccessfully trying to limit the increase to 12 years of age to ensure any consequences could be carefully considered before taking further steps to lift the minimum age to 14 years.

Under the new regime, the minimum age of criminal responsibility will be lifted to 12 years before increasing to 14 years on July 1, 2025, with Mr Rattenbury saying the reform was aimed at “changing the trajectory for young people and improving the safety of our whole community”.

While Australian Federal Police Association president Alex Caruana said he accepted increasing the criminal age of responsibility in the ACT to 12 years of age, he flagged major concerns at the “automatic movement to the age of 14 in two years’ time”.

“The AFPA’s preference would have been to review and ­interrogate the data obtained before the move to 14 years of age to determine if that movement was required,” he said.

“We do have some concerns with young people aged between 12 and 14 committing serious ­offences … and not being held criminally responsible.”

He suggested that young children in Canberra would now be at greater risk of being used by organised crime groups to commit burglaries and other crimes.

“We also have concerns that 12 to 14-year-olds may be manipulated by adult offenders or serious organised crime syndicates for the purpose of committing criminal offences on behalf of the adult or syndicate,” he said. “These adults and crime syndicates will know that the young person can’t be charged or held criminally ­responsible.”

The increase to the minimum age of criminal responsibility came as the head of the ACT Australian Medical Association, Walter Abhayaratna, expressed concern over the proposed voluntary assisted dying regime for the nation’s capital which would allow patients to access assisted suicide without having a predicted time of death of 12 months or less. Professor Abhayaratna said: “I am very wary of losing the safeguard of a six or 12 months timeline in terms of the duration of the illness before end of life.

“I am very concerned that this makes decision making more difficult. It has been a safeguard in other states and I would have thought that our first implementation of voluntary assisted dying should have included that.” He said the introduction of ­assisted dying should not come at the expense of investment into “palliative care services which are there to ensure that patients who have debilitating conditions – which are often terminal conditions – have access to comfort care.”

However, Professor Abhayaratna said he supported the aspect of the legislation which allowed nurse practitioners with expertise in the field of terminal care management to become part of a “multidisciplinary team making assessments for suitable participants in the VAD program”.

“I think that is quite a reasonable approach,” he said.

Defending the increase to the minimum age of criminal responsibility, Mr Rattenbury said young people got themselves into “harmful situations” and that “they need support to address that behaviour”.

“What we want to make sure is that young people are not ending up in the criminal justice system, but rather that they are being delivered therapeutic supports (and) that their lives are on a different track,” he said.