QCOSS strongly opposes passage of the Making Queensland Safer Bill, which seeks to legislate the Adult Crime, Adult Time laws and remove the principle of detention as a last resort from the Youth Justice Act 1992 (Qld), among other changes.

The harsh measures contained in the Bill will not make the community safer and are likely to result in the detention of more children for longer. This Bill will cause harm to some of the most disadvantaged children in Queensland.

The youth justice system in Queensland has a particularly disproportionate impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families and these laws will compound this. It has been particularly painful for many to see the Bill introduced on the same day that Parliament repealed the Path to Treaty Act 2023 without any Committee scrutiny nor opportunity for public comment.

We also raise concerns regarding the timeframes within which the Bill is passing through parliamentary processes. The legislative amendments proposed by the Bill are significant and should go through proper consultation processes. We note that this is just the first tranche of legislative changes proposed by the Government under the Making Our Community Safer Plan. We ask the Government to take a more consultative and measured approach in future.

We welcome recent commitments from the Queensland Government to invest in early intervention, diversion and rehabilitation. The harsh laws proposed by this Bill, however, will undermine those policies and investments.

Many in the community services sector are increasingly distressed by the current rhetoric and policies that de-humanise some of the most disadvantaged children in Queensland. It is fundamentally important to ensure communities feel safe, but the punitive measures contained in the Bill will not improve community safety.