Leader Tim Nicholls says party would scrap jail as a last resort for repeat youth offenders and enforce a 10pm curfew on children in Townsville

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Queensland’s Liberal National party has ignored previous warnings of breaching the United Nations convention on rights of the child by vowing to again scrap the principle of jail as a last resort for repeat youth offenders.

The LNP would also restore “name and shame” provisions, and enforce a blanket 10pm curfew on children in Townsville while lobbying the federal government to cut youth payments to parents of children in detention.

The LNP announced a “sweeping” youth crime crackdown in north Queensland’s biggest city, where leader Tim Nicholls hit the hustings on Thursday.

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Nicholls said drug and violent crime had risen and youth crime was “out of control” in north Queensland.

The LNP’s $26m plan would include a new police helicopter, “rapid action” patrols, removing the ban on police car chases, as well as a six-month trial of a 10pm curfew for children under 16 in Townsville.

The former Newman government was warned in 2014 by children’s court president Michael Shanahan it was breaching the UN convention on child rights by no longer treating jail as a last resort for repeat offenders.

Shanahan had also called on that government to end “name and shame” provisions, which the LNP would revive under its “three strikes policy” for child offenders as young as 13.

The plan is a pitch to restive community elements in Townsville, where unemployment remains stubbornly high amid a perceived crime wave and the appearance of vigilante Facebook groups that police have warned against.

Under the curfew in Townsville, police would collect children who would be taken to a local shelter until they could be returned safely to parents, the LNP said.

The shelter would be staffed by a counselor and a nurse.

LNP campaign spokesman Scott Emerson said the party in government would talk to the commonwealth about suspending parenting payments for those who had children in detention.

“We’ll liaise with the commonwealth about that in terms of youth payments for kids who are in detention, if the sense is that the parents have been amiss,” Emerson said .

“I mean obviously the issue will be that if you’re getting a youth payment for a kid who’s in detention, what are they getting it for?

“The commonwealth pays youth payments to the parents to look after kids. Now if the kids are in detention, they shouldn’t be getting the payments.”

Only around 20% of children in detention in Queensland have been found guilty by a court, with the other 80% on remand, according to state government figures in September.

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Asked if the LNP would lobby for parents of children in remand to have welfare payments removed, a party spokesman later did not specifically answer.

“Our six-month youth curfew trial is about improving community safety for the people of Townsville as well as ensuring the welfare of the child who is wandering the streets late at night,” he said.

“The LNP will work with the Commonwealth Government to encourage greater parental responsibility and protect the community from youth crime.”

The LNP spokesman also would not say whether there would be new legislation to allow police to collect youth on the street, who must give their consent to go with police as a current legal requirement.

Edith Cowan University youth work researcher Dr Trudi Cooper said the curfew was “political theatre” and police already had powers to remove people from the streets who were breaking the law.

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Cooper said a September report on Australia’s first youth curfew in Northbridge, Perth, found that “curfews don’t actually prevent crime, it just moves it”.

Labor’s attorney-general Yvette D’Ath said Labor had already begun operating a 24-hour shelter for unsupervised youth in Townsville in March.

D’Ath said this was the Lighthouse Service operated by the Townsville Aboriginal and Islander Health Service, from whom Nicholls as the former treasurer had cut $282,000 in funding.

“His hypocrisy knows no bounds. This is the very organisation providing the very service he is saying we need and he cut more than a quarter-of-a-million dollars in funding to it,” D’Ath said.