On Wednesday 16 September 2026, I gave a speech to Parliament on the Government's Youth Justice (Circuit Breaker) Amendment Bill 2026.
You can read my full speech below, or in the official Parliamentary record of proceedings (Hansard).
I rise to make my contribution to the Youth Justice (Circuit Breaker) Amendment Bill 2026. Maybe I am a little bit slow, but I find it genuinely astonishing that I have to speak against a bill like this, the entire purpose of which is to create a framework to effectively legalise forced child labour in Queensland. The LNP wants us to believe that these programs will somehow make the community safer. Ultimately, this is forced child labour dressed up as youth justice policy.
This is not hyperbole. We just need to look to the terms of the bill and the explanatory notes. First, it provides for the recognition of a so-called Circuit Breaker program, which must be an ‘intensive residential program with structured activities and strict routines and conditions’. They must provide ‘access to a rural property where children can gain knowledge, skills and experience’. Let’s not forget that it must be remote or rural. The program providers are responsible for the security, safety and wellbeing of these kids, and they are supposed to facilitate access to education. Let’s not forget that these providers are not required to report harm to a child in their program to the youth justice department if it would tend to incriminate them.
It should be abundantly clear to everyone here that having for-profit providers running these programs would be entirely inappropriate, but the bill does not prevent that. Let’s imagine for a second that a company that is profiting off these boot camps is exempt from reporting harm to the department that is funding the program. Even the Newman LNP’s boot camps did not give this exemption to the corporate providers or contractors. They are going even further than that rot. With the sites established, the bill will empower courts to require a child to attend the Circuit Breaker program where they will wear an electronic ankle monitor and be required to satisfactorily participate in activities, and this can be imposed for three to six months as a sentencing order or as a condition of bail—that is, without having been found guilty of an offence.
The bill classifies the Circuit Breaker program as a community-based order so they can effectively avoid calling them detention centres. A description of the mandatory conditions includes that children must reside at the site, may be searched, will wear an electronic monitoring device, are subject to 24/7 surveillance, are physically prevented from leaving and are restricted in terms of visits and communication with their family. The government can treat us like we are stupid, but this is just detention by another name without the same level of oversight, and it will be run by private providers who will have a licence to force children to engage in activities in remote locations and out of sight. Tell me this is not modern child slavery.
This is nothing new for Queensland, though. It is a continuation of colonial violence. We know that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children continue to be over-represented within the justice system, with more than 50 per cent of the distinct child defendants being First Nations despite representing three per cent of the population. In 2024-25, 83 per cent of the 10- and 11-year-olds convicted of an offence were First Nations kids. Those statistics are a direct result of the historical and contemporary colonial violence and the intergenerational trauma and disadvantage.
Rather than starting to heal that trauma and end the violence, this government is doubling down with a whole new stolen generation. Again, this is not hyperbole. For over 60 years government policy implemented the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families, their culture, their country and their communities. They were taken by government officials, police and child welfare workers. Children faced abuse and coercion, and they were used as unpaid domestic servants. Now the government wants to dress up their boot camps—sorry, maybe we should call them ‘missions’ and ‘reserves’, or maybe we will go with ‘boys’ homes’. They want their Circuit Breaker program to somehow be framed as something new and different. It is not. It is more of the same, and it will not render different results from what we have seen in the past.
This bill, like so much of what we have seen from this cruel LNP, prioritises retribution and slogans over genuine, long-term safety for children, families and the wider community. They just cannot get enough of punching down. In 2024 the Queensland youth justice census found that of the children and young people imprisoned in youth detention centres and police watch houses: 54 per cent had at least one mental health and/or behavioural disorder; 71 per cent had at least one cognitive disability; 86 per cent had used at least one illegal substance; and 70 per cent had experienced or been impacted by domestic and family violence.
The response here is that we are just going to punish. Their response is not evidence-based. The evidence is absolutely clear that children and young people are still developing their ability to control impulses and weigh up the consequences of their decisions before they act. This is a punitive approach, and ever harsher penalties do not deter crime, especially for children. There is no reliable evidence that shows that the type of program they have proposed will reduce offending or improve rehabilitative outcomes in any way.
The only precedent we have to point to is the Queensland LNP’s previous youth boot camps under then premier Campbell Newman from 2013 to 2015. An independent evaluation found that the boot camps had weak engagement from families and communities, had high costs and had difficulty reintegrating the young people involved. In their submission, YFS Legal put it really well when they said—
Research consistently demonstrates that connection to family, culture, education, employment and community are protective factors against offending and reoffending. Effective interventions strengthen these connections rather than undermine them.
This proposal does the exact opposite. There has been no real acknowledgement of the practical or logistical difficulties in implementing this kind of program effectively with genuine rehabilitation and support. There is no realistic confrontation by this government of the likely challenges in attracting and maintaining an adequately skilled workforce to deliver programs in ways that are culturally safe or that meet the needs of children with learning disabilities, affected by substance misuse, with other mental health disorders or with severe trauma. Witnesses who appeared before our committee told us we needed all of these things if it is going to be anything close to effective.
On its current trajectory, the only thing this government can do to solve antisocial behaviour is lock people up or send them away. On this path they will have to do it indefinitely at some point because they do not have an alternative. Crime does not come from a few bad kids doing the wrong thing; it is driven by social conditions.
A government that will send kids who are already at the margins of society far away from support in their community does not care about their rights and freedoms, the wellbeing of our communities or creating the conditions that reduce crime. A government that will do that contrary to all of the evidence does not care about preventing crime; it is just attempting to disappear the product of their own failings and tell us that more violence and cruelty against these kids somehow equals justice.
As a community, we deserve better than this. We have the evidence of what works. It makes me sick to think of the Premier before the last election saying he was going to listen to the experts. What tosh! The man is talking out of both sides of his face. Fostering a culture and a society that prioritises everyone having what they need to live a good life and make good choices, to access support and health care, to have safe housing, to be able to enjoy their rights and freedoms, and to live free from violence—this is what will restore safety in our communities for everyone.
While that is a bigger project—and one that I and the Greens will keep fighting for—there are immediate, evidence-based responses available that we could use right now to address the cycles of offending: having individual rehabilitation and integration plans; and having a focus on reintegration by involving a child’s family and community, strengthening the relationships for when they leave custody, not isolating them away from community. Programs have to be culturally appropriate and responsive. They have to be trauma informed. I have seen nothing that suggests we are going to have that in these programs. They have to be child centred and informed by developmental science. They need to involve genuine education and employment pathways. They need to have access to alcohol and other drug services with genuine continuity after any program finishes. This is only going to be achieved in small-scale residential facilities that are engaged with communities and by focusing on building protective factors in community rather than managing individual risk.