Youth offenders in Queensland to face tougher sentences for serious crimes

Hardline youth justice laws to sentence youth offenders as adults for more than a dozen serious crimes have passed Queensland parliament.

Transcript

00:00This legislation was really considered sort of the hallmark of the state government for

00:06their election campaign. Those slogans, adult crime, adult time, were plastered all across

00:11the state. So what these changes are going to look like is that effectively there will

00:15be tougher sentences for young offenders for up to 13 serious crimes here in Queensland

00:20and they include murder, manslaughter as well as burglary. And just to give you an example,

00:26if a young person aged between 10 to 17 years old is found guilty of say murder, they face

00:31a mandatory life sentence as well as a maximum non-parole period of up to 20 years. Now these

00:38law changes were largely triggered by the high-profile deaths of Angus Beaumont, Violine

00:43White, Kate Ledbetter as well as Matthew Field. And yesterday, before the laws were officially

00:48passed through, the Premier David Christopher Lee invited the families of those victims

00:53to watch on. Now what was particularly interesting was that the state's opposition, all members,

00:58did vote for the bill, but the ABC does understand that one Labor backbencher, John T. Bush,

01:03who is an advocate for victims of crime, had spoken out against the legislation and had

01:08reservations. The ABC does now also understand that she is considering what her future is

01:13going to look like in the Labor Party. Now the state government is hoping that this bill

01:19will become official law before Christmas to fulfil their pre-election promise. Of course,

01:24while the bill has passed through state parliament, there is still the matter of the Governor-General

01:30signing off on the bill as well. And there are questions that do remain on the impacts

01:34that these changes to the law will have on the state's already struggling youth detention

01:38centres as well as watch houses. But Mel, it does mark sort of the final sitting week

01:43here in Queensland for state parliament, and state parliament is not expected to resume

01:47until early next year in February.