An advocate for raising the age of criminal responsibility says all levels of government need to show leadership on not locking up children.
The comment comes following attempts by organisations to gain access to submissions given to the Meeting of Attorney’s General, who met last year to discuss the prospect of raising the age.
By last year’s meeting 93 submissions were handed in, with 88 of them being approved for public release by the authors.
Despite this, multiple attempts to gain access to the submissions, including Freedom of Information requests and a push in the Senate, have failed.
More than half of the organisations who authored the submissions have since published them, all of which are in favour of raising the age.
The last Meeting of Attorney’s General decided they wanted to see what alternatives there are to locking up children.
The Federal Government then said the decision was ultimately up to each jurisdiction on whether to raise the age.
Legal Director for the Human Rights Law Centre, Meena Singh says it would have been great to see some leadership from the Commonwealth.
