Editorial: How many more have to die before the Premier wakes up?

With 18 deaths in two years, there is no denying Queensland’s youth crime crisis has spiralled out of control. The Premier needs to stop playing politics and act, writes The Editor.

• Police union: Sentence kids as adults for horrific crimes

There are some pretty serious legal limitations on what we can say about this topic, but we are going to try anyway – because the topic of youth crime is now so serious that it demands an open conversation.

And so to begin, we say that it is nothing short of a tragedy that again it is a teenager who has been charged over the deaths of innocent Queenslanders.

This time three people are dead, in a crash in Maryborough involving a stolen car allegedly being driven by a 13-year-old – a tragedy that takes the toll of innocent victims from our state’s youth crime wave to 18 in two years.

Kelsie Davies was one of three women killed in the Maryborough crash.

Fraser Coast nurse Sheree Robertson also died in the Maryborough crash.

Eighteen deaths! There is clearly something very wrong in the way the courts are dealing with youths, who once convicted or charged with serious crimes, should not be on our streets. We are also not at all convinced that the government is taking this issue seriously enough.

The 13-year-old charged over the crash was just 5 when Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk won office.

Michale Chandler died in the crash allegedly involving a 13-year-old driving a stolen car, pictured with husband Matthew.

The Premier was right to send her condolences on Monday. But she should have said more yesterday than just “I’m limited as to what I can say”, and that “these are very, very complex issues”.

Those are words of a politician who does not want to engage.

The Premier should instead take the lead of Russell Field. He asked yesterday: “How many more people have to die, innocent people?”

Mr Field’s son Matthew, and Matthew’s pregnant fiancee Kate Leadbetter, were killed by a drunk and high juvenile in a stolen car on Australia Day in 2021. The Court of Appeal yesterday ruled that the 10-year sentence given to the teenager driver was appropriate, given the submissions to the judge at the time. The offender will be back on the streets four years from now.

Matt Field and Kate Leadbetter were killed in a horror crash involving a stolen car at Alexandra Hills.

“It’s tragic that this has happened again,” Mr Field said outside court, in reference to Sunday night’s crash tragedy. He said the government had “blood on their hands because nothing was done earlier”.

Now of course we do not suggest the Premier is not as personally touched by these tragedies as any other Queenslander. There is no doubt she grieves with all of us.

But it also appears that – as we have reported – the issue of youth crime has been viewed by senior Palaszczuk government figures as a political problem to be papered over quickly, rather than a long-term problem that demands more than just rushed legislation cooked up in the hours before a press conference.

Police Union president Ian Leavers. Picture: Adam Smith

As Police Union president Ian Leavers rightly points out (and our lawyers say that we have to point out that he is speaking generally, and not about the matter currently before the courts) attacking youth crime demands an approach across government that extends way beyond four-year electoral cycles.

Those who work with young offenders say there are risk factors that can identify which children at under the age of 5 will be stealing cars when they are teens – factors as simple as kids from certain families not regularly turning up to prep.

By the time these kids are 10 “the horse has already bolted and it gets to a point of no return”.

Mr Leavers also takes aim at the “bleeding hearts” and “do-gooders” who do not understand that the core group of young offenders now running rampant in so many towns and suburbs across Queensland are not just “misguided youths”. They are instead serious and dangerous troublemakers, who “need to be dealt with accordingly”. And so, Mr Leavers says, not only do the courts need to step up and do their job, but so do those adults with legal responsibility for these children.

We could not agree more. Yes, this is a political headache. But it is also a genuine crisis. We join Mr Field today in asking of those with the power to make change: How many more people have to die?

RBA SHOULD HAVE TAKEN A BREATHER

WE are of course nowhere near as qualified as the Reserve Bank board when it comes to making economic decisions. But we cannot help but wonder if yesterday’s unexpected decision to lift official interest rates for the 11th time in a year was perhaps, this time, unnecessary.

The impact to both consumer and business confidence from this latest 0.25 per cent hike will be profound. Instead of a continuation of what most expected to a breather for a few months while the RBA properly assessed the impact of its earlier decisions, Australians were hit with another sledgehammer.

Yesterday’s decision will see repayments on a pretty standard $500,000 mortgage rise another $76 a month on top of the nearly $1000 extra such households are paying now than a year ago.

That is tough enough. But what it also means is that households will have to continue to again reassess their spending, and so will make decisions that will reverberate through the entire economy.

Yes, inflation remains far beyond the RBA’s 2-3 per cent target range. But it is slowing, and confidence must surely be a factor for a Reserve Bank trying to navigate the way out.

Originally published as Editorial: How many more have to die before the Premier wakes up?