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Federal government under pressure to intervene in NT incarceration 'crisis'
Federal government under pressure to intervene in NT incarceration 'crisis'

ABC News

timean hour ago

  • Politics
  • ABC News

Federal government under pressure to intervene in NT incarceration 'crisis'

One of Australia's largest Aboriginal legal services is calling on the federal government to intervene in what it is calling an incarceration "crisis" in the Northern Territory. The NT's prison population has soared to unprecedented levels in recent months, with prisoners locked up inside police watch houses for days on end due to a lack of beds at correctional facilities. In one recent incident, an 11-year-old Aboriginal girl who was initially denied bail was detained overnight inside Palmerston's overcrowded police watch house, where the lights remain on 24 hours a day. The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency's (NAAJA) acting chief executive, Anthony Beven, has called on the federal government to suspend Commonwealth funding for remote policing and other justice-related operations until the NT government changes its hardline approach to crime. Since the Country Liberal Party came to power last year, the NT government has lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 12 back to 10 and introduced tougher bail laws for both adults and children. Mr Beven said the measures were not working to reduce crime and were leading to large numbers of Aboriginal people being incarcerated. "One of the unique things we have here in the Northern Territory is that the Commonwealth actually funds the Northern Territory police for remote policing and other options," Mr Beven said. The NT Police Force was budgeted to receive about $50 million in Commonwealth funding in 2024-25. Mr Beven also said NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro had so far refused to meet with NAAJA and other Aboriginal leaders to discuss strategies aimed at reducing crime. In a statement, Federal Indigenous Australians Minister Marndirri McCarthy said: "There is something very wrong with the Northern Territory justice system when an 11-year-old girl is held in an adult police watch house for two days and one night." "It is primarily Northern Territory bail laws that are driving this issue," she said. Ms McCarthy said the NT government had previously committed to reducing the incarceration rates of First Nations people under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. NT Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby slammed Mr Beven's comments as "utterly absurd". "Threatening to cut essential funding to remote policing is counterproductive, dangerous, and undermines community confidence," Ms Boothby said in a statement. "There is no alternative: those who break the law will be arrested. "Corrections will continue to expand capacity to ensure those who are remanded or sentenced have a bed, because that's what the community expects." Ms Boothby said the adult prison in Berrimah, on Darwin's outskirts, would be expanded to accommodate an extra 238 prison beds by mid-August. Ms Finocchiaro has been contacted for comment. The situation in the Northern Territory comes amid growing international concern about youth justice in Australia. In a letter to the federal government in May, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Edwards, and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Albert K Barume, singled out the NT's record on human rights. "Several states and the Northern Territory are announcing new 'tougher' criminal legislation, which seem to give little regard to international human rights standards," they wrote. The letter said there was an "ongoing pattern" of First Nations children being disproportionately incarcerated, noting that in the Northern Territory, Indigenous children are 32 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Indigenous children. It also said the NT government's decision to reduce the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10 was "a step backwards", and criticised the lifting of a ban on spit hoods being used on children. "Spit hoods … are considered inherently in violation of the prohibition of torture and/or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," they wrote. The federal government has not responded to the letter in the requested 60-day timeframe.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a deadly shambles - it's time for a real aid effort
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a deadly shambles - it's time for a real aid effort

The National

time6 hours ago

  • Politics
  • The National

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a deadly shambles - it's time for a real aid effort

When it was first established, in February, the main selling point of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was that it was the best of bad options. The foundation's masterminds, Israel and the US, argued using private security contractors to hand out aid parcels from stations inside Israeli military zones would be safer and prevent them from being intercepted by Hamas. Global aid organisations condemned the plan for flying in the face of international law and humanitarian principles. But Israel's government had already banned UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians, from operating inside Gaza, and either restricted the entrance of aid groups to scale their operations or stopped them altogether. For Gaza's two million civilians, suffering one of the world's most acute humanitarian crises, the only available alternative to the GHF experiment was certain mass starvation. The experiment has failed. Since the GHF sites opened, more than 700 Palestinians have been killed approaching them or waiting in the queue – many of them, if not most, allegedly by the Israeli military. Some of the deaths have been attributed to stampedes, others to Hamas fighters and several to GHF security contractors themselves. The experiment has failed Some GHF contractors have come forward to the international media, which is barred by Israel's military from reporting freely in Gaza, to speak out about some of their colleagues' alleged conduct. The most appalling allegations describe behaviour that, if proved, would be criminal – treating guard towers at aid sites more like snipers' nests from which to pick off vulnerable Palestinians. In a statement on Monday, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA's Commissioner-General, described the GHF sites as "a sadistic death trap". Incidents at GHF sites reflect a broader pattern of Palestinian civilians being targeted near aid delivery points throughout Gaza. The bloodiest yet occurred on Sunday, when 93 people were allegedly killed by the Israeli military while approaching a food bank near Gaza City. One eyewitness told The National Israeli forces fired 'from all directions' as civilians approached an aid lorry with their hands raised. The GHF says shooting incidents at its sites, for which it denies responsibility, should not overshadow the organisation's work. It claims to have delivered as many as half a million meals a day. Even this figure, however, is underwhelming in comparison to the UN-backed meal delivery system, which delivered just over one million meals a day through a network of 180 kitchens in April, before new access restrictions imposed by Israeli authorities cut this figure down by 70 per cent. Denying access to food, whether through restrictions or terrorising people queueing for aid, is a war crime – a point that has been made repeatedly by Michael Fakhri, the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food. Twenty-eight countries, including Britain and France, have now condemned Israel's aid policy as dangerous and destabilising. On Sunday, talks began in Cairo and Doha between Israel, the US and several Arab countries on resuming aid airdrops to Gaza – an imperfect but far safer delivery method than the one in place now. In truth, the UN system for aid delivery, designed and implemented by seasoned humanitarians with global funding and oversight, is the only truly effective and morally acceptable one. Allowing Israel to set the terms for aid distribution has achieved little other than bolstering a perception that it has no intention of stopping the systematic starvation of Palestinians.

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