Welcoming address to indigenous preliminary conference
DATE: 13 September 2006
TIME: 9.15am
PLACE: Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Acton Peninsula, Canberra
INTRODUCTION
- Good morning. It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you to the Indigenous Preliminary Conference.
- I particularly welcome Mr Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and Acting Race Discrimination Commissioner.
- I am very pleased that we have participants here from all over Australia. That means we can look forward to a number of valuable contributions from your different personal experiences of law and justice issues involving Indigenous people.
- Today provides you with an opportunity to discuss and take part in the development of the draft National Indigenous Law and Justice Strategy which is presently being prepared by the Attorney-General’s Department.
- I hope that the development of a carefully prepared Strategy will provide a framework for all Australian governments, service providers, their clients, and the community generally to progress Indigenous law and justice issues in a more coordinated manner over the next few years.
- We are basing the draft Strategy on the three priority areas identified by the Ministerial Taskforce on Indigenous Affairs. As you know, those three priorities are early childhood intervention, safer communities, and building indigenous wealth, employment and entrepreneurial culture
- The Strategy will build on the steps which have already been taken to improve the contact Indigenous people have with the legal system. It also needs to take account of the current arrangements that exist at the federal and the State and Territory levels so it can result in an Australia-wide, whole of government approach to Indigenous affairs.
- Today I want to briefly explain how Indigenous Affairs are managed by the Australian Government under our present arrangements. Then I want to talk to you about the important topics of restorative justice and alternative sentencing.
- I know this is going to sound bureaucratic – and it is – but Indigenous Affairs involve many government departments and agencies. Trying to put a cohesive structure around these complex relationships isn’t easy, as you are well aware.
- Indigenous policy is coordinated by the Ministerial Taskforce at a national level and by Aboriginal Justice Agreements or other high level law and justice strategies in the States and Territories.
- The Ministerial Taskforce on Indigenous Affairs was established in 2004 following the end of ATSIC. The Taskforce is made up by all the Ministers who have responsibility for some aspect of policy or service delivery that affects Indigenous people. The purpose of the Taskforce is to coordinate the Government’s Indigenous policy and to make recommendations to Cabinet about policy changes.
- The Taskforce is chaired by the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs who has an overall role in managing Indigenous matters in Australia. Mr Brough is advised by the Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination.
- The Attorney-General is a member of the Taskforce and he provides expert support to the Government on law and justice matters.
- At their meeting on 29 March this year, the Ministers agreed on four priority areas for the Attorney-General’s Department to work on. These are:
- Increasing actual and perceived safety;
- Reducing crime in communities and improving access to justice;
- Reducing imprisonment and juvenile detention; and
- Reducing the impacts of family violence.
- Under these four priority areas, my Department has decided on four priority actions for the 2006-07 financial year. These are:
- First, to expand access to family violence prevention legal services by increasing the number of services from 26 to 31 services around Australia. These new services will enable more Indigenous Australians who are victims of family violence to get legal advice, help with their legal case and counselling.
- Second, to increase access to services that can assist in resolving family disputes and preventing family breakdown through a network of Family Relationship Centres, a National Family Relationship Advice Line and other new or expanded services for families. The first Relationship Centres opened for business in July.
- The third priority action is to develop a National Indigenous Law and Justice Strategy to provide – as I have said - a framework for a whole-of-government, coordinated approach to Indigenous justice issues across Australia.
- And fourth, to implement the law enforcement, criminal justice and cultural law measures agreed by Australian and State and Territory leaders at the Summit on Violence and Child Abuse in Indigenous Communities which was held in June
- I think you will agree that these are all very important objectives. I hope in particular that your contribution today can assist us in drafting the National Law and Justice Strategy. Once the draft Strategy has been approved by Government, it will be widely circulated for general consultation. So everyone will have a chance to have direct input before the Strategy is finalised.
RESTORATIVE JUSTICE AND ALTERNATIVE SENTENCING
- Now I want to talk about restorative justice and alternative sentencing.
- A key element of the national Strategy will be the increased use of restorative justice and alternative sentencing to reduce Indigenous over-representation in prisons.
- I know many of you will have had direct involvement in these approaches to punishment for criminal offences. But just so we are clear, I think of restorative justice like this.
- Restorative justice is a different way of dealing with criminal berhaviour. Its principal focus is on the people involved – the offender, the victim and their community. It looks for new ways to heal the damage the offence has caused, not just to punish the offender.
- I think it is fair to say that restorative justice is aimed at preventing future crimes just as much (or possibly more) than punishing past ones. It recognises that imprisonment is not likely to remedy the underlying causes that lead to a lot of criminal activity in the first place.
- But restorative justice is not a soft option. It is not anonymous justice. It requires the offender to be accountable for – and acknowledge the consequences of - his or her offence, often by confronting both the victim and the leaders of his or her community.
- Examples of these restorative justice options in practice include the Murri, Koori and Nungar courts and circle sentencing.
- By involving respected elders in the sentencing process, offenders can often be made to see the harm they have caused and the shame they have brought on their family which may turn them away from similar offences in future.
- Other initiatives that can assist in reducing the high rate of Indigenous imprisonment include greater use of non-custodial sentences (such as community service orders, periodic detention and home detention).
- Other examples of restorative justice include specialist domestic violence and drug and alcohol courts. States and Territories have also implemented community supervision and community support programs, including counselling and mentoring which can use restorative justice principles.
- Another type of alternative sentencing is a voluntary mediation between the victim and the offender. This allows the victim to express their feelings about the crime and its personal impact and the victim has a considerable role in deciding how the offender is going to repair the damage caused by the offence. In this kind of mediation, the victim initiates the proceedings with guidance and encouragement from the mediator, and the offender is then encouraged to speak.
- That mediation process can help the victim come to terms with the offence by expressing their views about it and the offender can gain an understanding of the harm he or she had caused. Both parties would then agree on a plan of reparation (which could involve community work, assistance for the victim and so on).
- I will be pleased to champion alternative sentencing and restorative justice initiatives for Indigenous Australians within the Australian Government. I will do what I can to promote, and encourage discussion on, these issues among government agencies and between governments.
- In this regard, I was very encouraged to see that Circle Sentencing in Nowra received a $10,000 award and a certificate of merit in the 2005 Australian Crime Prevention and Violence Prevention Awards administered by my Department.
NEED FOR IMPROVEMENT
- There is clearly a need for these improved, innovative approaches.
- Existing legal processes are not having a sufficient impact in reducing the rates of conviction and imprisonment of Indigenous Australians. Despite the findings of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, the rate of imprisonment for Indigenous Australians has increased in recent years.
- An Indigenous adult is 11 times more likely to be imprisoned than any other Australian adult. An Indigenous juvenile is 20 times more likely to be imprisoned than any other Australian juvenile. And there was no decrease in the rates of imprisonment for Indigenous Australians between 2000 and 2004.
- Imprisonment rates have actually increased by 25 % for Indigenous women over those four years.
- One point of significance is that Indigenous prisoners are more likely to be serving shorter sentences than the overall prison population. A 2001 study indicated that if Indigenous offenders in NSW serving sentences of 6 months or less were given non-custodial sentences, the number of offenders in prison would be reduced by 54 per cent over a 12-month period. Restorative justice offers alternative sentences that may reduce the use short prison terms and avoid the cycle of re-offending and re-imprisonment they can create.
- These statistics reinforce the pressing need to deal with the cause or source of the bad behaviour that leads to trouble (by prevention, cure, diversion and so on), and not the result of it (by guilty verdicts and punishment).
- The causes we all know about include lack of education, poor environment, bad housing, drug and alcohol abuse – in other words, the normal socio-economic factors that have long been observed to lead or contribute to crime. Imprisonment does not fix there underlying problems.
- In thinking about these issues, I was reminded of a comment made about family violence by a senior Indigenous person. She said Indigenous women don’t want their men put in gaol, they just want the violence to stop.
- But alternative approaches are not only a good idea as far as the offender, the victim and their community are concerned. They make good financial and common sense.
- The economic and social costs of imprisonment are very high. The cost of keeping an adult person in prison is about $70,000 a year and approximately $100,000 for a juvenile. The total cost for Indigenous Australians in prison is estimated to be around $400 million a year. Obviously any reduction we can achieve in expenditure on prisons is in everyone’s interests.
CONCLUSION
- In conclusion, I thank you for your attendance at this important conference.
- I trust you have a productive day discussing the development of the National Indigenous Law and Justice Strategy and, as part of that discussion, the broader application of restorative justice as part of our legal system.
Robert Cornall AO