Age of Criminal Responsibility

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (14:41): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before addressing a question without notice to the Attorney-General on the topic of young people and the law.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS: On Sunday, the Premier released a report that outlined a legislative option for banning children under the age of 14 from accessing social media. The Premier has publicly stated his desire to legislate in this area on the basis that social media causes harm to children. Meanwhile, over 130 Australian organisations have joined a coalition calling for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised to 14 due to the harm caused by exposure to the criminal justice system.

Evidence from brain development experts shows that criminalising the actions of children can cause long-term harm. Children who are arrested by police, sent to court or locked away are more likely to develop mental illness, to disengage from school, to become homeless or even to die prematurely. My question to the Attorney-General is: why does the government believe that at 10 in South Australia you are too young to go on Instagram but you are old enough to be held criminally responsible and detained in adult facilities?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (14:42): I thank the honourable member for his question. Certainly, there are a whole range of areas where we think—and for many decades parliaments have recognised—harm can be caused to children. We don't allow children to enter casinos, for example for very, very good reasons.

I am very proud of the policy that this Labor government has taken in relation to what is an area that has developed very, very rapidly: the area of social media and its interaction on developing brains. Having had three young kids who are now all teenagers and seeing how their interactions are so vastly different from what I encountered decades ago at that same age, I think it is extraordinarily difficult being a young person today with the pressures and just how quickly those pressures are applied with the advent of social media.

This government commissioned former Chief Justice Robert French to provide some guidance into how we might look at legislating in relation to this area. I was fortunate to be able to spend some time at the end of last week meeting with the Premier and Justice French and have had a very close examination, now that it has been publicly released, of I think the approximately 274-page report which sets out some draft legislative framework in relation to how you might implement a policy of banning social media for children under 14 and only with parental consent up to the age of 16.

I am even more pleased that, on the back of the work that South Australia has done in this area, the federal government has announced they will take this up and use the work that we have done to inform them when looking at a nationwide ban. I think the Premier said at the time on Sunday that it would be preferable to have a nationwide ban, but if that didn't occur South Australia would look at going it alone.

In relation to the other part of the honourable member's question, the minimum age of criminal responsibility, I understand and appreciate and congratulate the honourable member for his very significant advocacy in this area. I have informed the chamber before when he has asked, which I suspect was probably last sitting week, that we continue work on this in South Australia and certainly it is a question I have been asked over the last week as we have developed our policy on social media.

I am happy to repeat again that the overriding consideration this government is taking into account when it is assessing feedback from the discussion paper that we have previously released is the interests of community safety: what will make the community safer. I acknowledge that there are arguments about not locking kids up in a custodial setting and rather looking at therapeutic or family intervention models that can have the effect of making it less likely for that very young child, a 10 or 11 year old, to end up being a teenager of 16 or 17 who offends and then a young adult who offends.

We are continuing the work as a government to look at, if we did make the change, what would come in its place because, as I have said before, the thing you would last want to do is just change a number in a bit of legislation from 10 to 14 without having everything else that is needed in relation to that.

One of the other complexities we are working through is not just what takes the place of criminal justice intervention and detention in detention facilities but what role the police play. How do you ensure someone is removed from a situation for their own safety as well as the community's safety? It is important that there are still those powers of immediate intervention for the police to ensure not just community safety but individual safety and that work continues.