General News
1 September, 2020
One Nation talking tough on crime
While on the campaign trail Ms Hanson and Ms Neal made some startling policy announcements regarding youth justice and crime.
Last week One Nation leader Pauline Hanson visited the seat of Cook to announce that Brettlyn “The Beaver’’ Neal has been endorsed by One Nation to take on Labor’s Cynthia Lui in the upcoming state election.
While on the campaign trail Ms Hanson and Ms Neal made some startling policy announcements regarding youth justice and crime.
Ms Neal who has been working on the cape for the past 7 years as a youth program manager working towards Aboriginal advancement said that the area has been neglected for a long time.
“If we don’t address youth crime now we won’t have a nice country in a few years.”
Ms Hanson said that she met Ms Neal about 4 years ago while on a fact-finding mission across the cape and the two of them bonded over the mutual agreement for tough love on youth offenders.
“I went out to Doomadgee where Brettlyn was working with Aboriginal kids and I liked her approach, she is all about tough love.” Ms Hanson said
While in Mareeba they commented on their youth crime policy saying that peopled need to be accountable and that ‘if you do the crime you need to do the time’.
Ms Hanson said that detention centres don’t work and raised the idea of boot camps in the bush “We have spoken to the Elders and we now have the three big rivers program,” she said
“Instead of going to a detention centre where they play pool and games or get a slap on the wrist.
“They take the kids out bush and they have to pick mangoes and work on properties, this gives the kids a work ethic and this is for white and black kids.”
When asked about the proposal of raising Australia's minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, Ms Neal said that if the age of kids who can’t go to jail is raised then the parents should be sent to jail with the kids.
“If kids go to jail with their parents; they will be pulled into line pretty quickly by the parents,” Ms Neal said
“I’ve been working in these communities for years and they re-offend straight after they are let out of detention.
“Kids these days are running rampant on the streets and there is no fear of anything, their parents are not reining them in, there has to be a fear factor.”
Ms Neal said that one of the issues of youth crime is that children are committing crimes instead of going to school. “If you give the parents the choice of school or jail the parents will send the kids to school,”
“Someone needs to be held responsible.”
