Mr BALCH - 2000-08-08
What is his response to the Australian Labor Party’s decision to support Western Australia’s mandatory sentencing laws?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I say quite simply that I hope this is the end of the mandatory sentencing debate. I believe that the Labor Party, in the Northern Territory and federally, are absolutely bereft of principle. The line that they tried to run in the Territory, nationally and internationally was that among the many criticisms of mandatory sentencing that it fell heavily on Aboriginal people. Because Aboriginal people are most disadvantaged, it is Aboriginal people who are most prone to being captured by the justice system in one way or another and mandatory sentencing falls heavily on that disadvantaged group.
I challenged the federal Leader of the Opposition nationally at the time to take that argument into Western Australia, take that argument that law-abiding citizens should not be protected by mandatory sentencing and promote the idea that it is the criminal’s interests that should be paramount, not those of the victim. Of course, he would not do that.
What we have seen come out of the federal National Party conference is a total abandonment of any principal that the Labor Party purported to have.
Ms Martin: It wasn’t a National Party conference - it was a Labor Party conference!
Mr BURKE: National Labor Party conference. What we have, in order to save Kim Beazley’s political neck, is the Labor Party now supporting mandatory sentencing in Western Australia and at the same time condemning mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory. They are supporting mandatory sentencing in a jurisdiction that jails Aboriginal people on a per capita basis at nine times the rate that they are jailed in the Northern Territory, and they are condemning Northern Territory for the mandatory sentencing regime that we have here.
The Labor Party are supporting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom’s wife, Cherie Booth, going to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations complaining about the Northern Territory’s mandatory sentencing laws which for a third-strike adult …
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr BURKE: At mate’s rates, too, I might add. I would like to know what the mate’s rates were for the NAALAS case against our Chief Magistrate and what the mate’s rates are for Cherie Booth. She is going to run an argument, supported by this mob, against the Northern Territory’s mandatory sentencing laws when in the United Kingdom a third-strike burglar gets jailed for three years mandatory. In the Northern Territory, a third-strike burglar gets jailed for 12 months. The wife of the United Kingdom Prime Minister who brought in that policy is charading under the pretence of criticising the Northern Territory.
It is an absolute joke in terms of the Labor Party’s position. They have been rolled. I do not believe, frankly, that the Labor Party in the Northern Territory is listened to at all. Certainly the leader isn’t. It is very hard - I sympathise - when two of her own members, Crossin and Snowdon, believe they run the show and she doesn’t. In any case her argument that somehow in the Northern Territory we will change our own laws was totally abandoned by the national Labor conference in a the motion that if the federal Labor Party became government nationally they would override the Northern Territory’s mandatory sentencing laws. That at the same time they would support mandatory sentencing in Western Australia is an absolute disgrace.
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I say quite simply that I hope this is the end of the mandatory sentencing debate. I believe that the Labor Party, in the Northern Territory and federally, are absolutely bereft of principle. The line that they tried to run in the Territory, nationally and internationally was that among the many criticisms of mandatory sentencing that it fell heavily on Aboriginal people. Because Aboriginal people are most disadvantaged, it is Aboriginal people who are most prone to being captured by the justice system in one way or another and mandatory sentencing falls heavily on that disadvantaged group.
I challenged the federal Leader of the Opposition nationally at the time to take that argument into Western Australia, take that argument that law-abiding citizens should not be protected by mandatory sentencing and promote the idea that it is the criminal’s interests that should be paramount, not those of the victim. Of course, he would not do that.
What we have seen come out of the federal National Party conference is a total abandonment of any principal that the Labor Party purported to have.
Ms Martin: It wasn’t a National Party conference - it was a Labor Party conference!
Mr BURKE: National Labor Party conference. What we have, in order to save Kim Beazley’s political neck, is the Labor Party now supporting mandatory sentencing in Western Australia and at the same time condemning mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory. They are supporting mandatory sentencing in a jurisdiction that jails Aboriginal people on a per capita basis at nine times the rate that they are jailed in the Northern Territory, and they are condemning Northern Territory for the mandatory sentencing regime that we have here.
The Labor Party are supporting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom’s wife, Cherie Booth, going to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations complaining about the Northern Territory’s mandatory sentencing laws which for a third-strike adult …
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order!
Mr BURKE: At mate’s rates, too, I might add. I would like to know what the mate’s rates were for the NAALAS case against our Chief Magistrate and what the mate’s rates are for Cherie Booth. She is going to run an argument, supported by this mob, against the Northern Territory’s mandatory sentencing laws when in the United Kingdom a third-strike burglar gets jailed for three years mandatory. In the Northern Territory, a third-strike burglar gets jailed for 12 months. The wife of the United Kingdom Prime Minister who brought in that policy is charading under the pretence of criticising the Northern Territory.
It is an absolute joke in terms of the Labor Party’s position. They have been rolled. I do not believe, frankly, that the Labor Party in the Northern Territory is listened to at all. Certainly the leader isn’t. It is very hard - I sympathise - when two of her own members, Crossin and Snowdon, believe they run the show and she doesn’t. In any case her argument that somehow in the Northern Territory we will change our own laws was totally abandoned by the national Labor conference in a the motion that if the federal Labor Party became government nationally they would override the Northern Territory’s mandatory sentencing laws. That at the same time they would support mandatory sentencing in Western Australia is an absolute disgrace.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016