Panel with Jayne Azzopardi and Sofie Formica, Today Show

24 August 2023

JAYNE AZZOPARDI: Joining us to discuss today's headlines is Liberal Senator Jane Hume and 4BC presenter Sophie Formica. Sophie, we'll start with you. Is this the answer to the problem that is facing Queensland?

SOFIE FORMICA: Look, I think had something had to be done, an announcement needed to be made. We know that when it comes to youth offenders, the current laws state that they should stay in a police watch house until there is somewhere to move them to as quick as possible and as practical as possible. But as you said Jane, a lot of the youth detention centres are at capacity, if not at capacity, and the ones that are being built aren't ready to go. So they had to be seen to be doing something. It's one of those situations at the moment where we're demanding more from the government and then as soon as they do something, you'll always have a group of people who'll complain about that as well. It's not an ideal scenario but the reality is that resi care isn't working and a lot of these kids, particularly the ones who are the re-offenders, were finding themselves in residential care less than ideal there as well, not really supervised. And allegedly we know one of those offenders is now up on one of the charges that you spoke about, the people who have lost their lives to a young offender And so something needed to change. What happened yesterday was really extraordinary. In three short weeks, they were able to get this rally up where hundreds of people marched on parliament. If it had been on a weekend, it would have been tens of thousands. They did it yesterday because they had to do it on a sitting day. They wanted to take the submission to the ministers to speak to them about the changes that they'd like to see. And Jane, I'd be really interested to hear from you. I know it might seem naive, but a lot of the conversation that we're having on talkback radio is that the community would like this to be a multi-party approach. They're sick of it being politicised. They want everybody to come to the table. They want to see plans put in place and they want to see those plans. Beyond an election cycle. It's really easy for the opposition to get up in this case and beat their chest and say, No, this isn't good enough, but no one's really coming up with what the solution would be if they were the ones that were the decision makers. So I think the community is beyond it being political and now saying, what are you going to do to keep the community safe? These kids have been failed by their parents and now they've been failed by society because many of them have done the wrong thing in the past and never really faced a consequence. We know there's a small cohort of re-offenders, so what are we going to do to get them, take them out of society, look at rehabilitating them and making a decision as to whether or not they can come back into the community?

JAYNE AZZOPARDI: Jane, it does feel like this is a situation where the community is leading the politicians to the answer. Is it time for both sides to sit down, work together and put this plan in place?

JANE HUME: Well, I think that David Crisafulli has been right when he says that, you know, the government really has let down this generation. If you water down the laws, if you take fewer, more police off the streets, well, then you're going to create an entire generation of untouchables that believe that their rights, in fact, know that their rights are greater than the rights of their victims. Finally, now the victims are speaking out and they've come out in droves. But clearly this very tired Palaszczuk government has stopped listening. Now, quite frankly, the idea that they have put these changes into the Parliament without scrutiny I think is something that should be of great concern. We want to work together with governments and oppositions want to work together at every step of the way. But if you're going to jam through your legislation without scrutiny, what sort of sign what sort of signal is that you want to genuinely find a solution? Of course the Opposition in Queensland want to, stop the youth crime, want to reverse this generation that has really that has been failed by government. But they need to do that with the Government. needs to reach out and not say that it's got all the answers and try and sort of jam through these brand new ideas, which are quite controversial, let's face it, without scrutiny. All right. Well, Annastacia Palaszczuk will be on the show a little later to answer some of those questions. But I want to take you to another issue now again involving young people.

JAYNE AZZOPARDI: Shocking vision emerging out of a school in Melbourne's west this morning. A group of teenagers can be seen allegedly kicking and stomping on someone who is on the floor and teachers have to get in and intervene. Jane, we're hearing that five teenage girls have been arrested. Do you expect this kind of violence in our schools?

JANE HUME: I don't think that the community expect this kind of violence in schools. Certainly, teachers should be able to go to school, not fearing for their safety. This is shocking footage, And you can understand now why parents are also speaking with their feet, pulling their children out of state run schools and putting them into private schools. Unfortunately, here in Victoria, they're actually taxing private schools more now, so it's costing even more. We don't know what's causing this wave of civil disobedience, particularly in young people. We know that to some extent it's driven by the rising cost of living. I was in Alice Springs just a couple of days ago and they're experiencing similar types of anti-social behaviour from young people, crime waves there, too. You know, this is something that we've got to address in a holistic kind of way, but this sort of behaviour in schools is totally unacceptable and it's certainly not something teachers should have to deal with.

JAYNE AZZOPARDI: I'm afraid we've run out of time. Both of you, thank you both for your time this morning.