Proposed changes to Queensland's Youth Justice Act to remove detention as a last resort for children could breach the state's human rights laws, a parliamentary committee has found.

However, it has still recommended passing the contentious bill into legislation, with LNP members of the bi-partisan committee arguing the proposed legislation doesn't go far enough.

The Queensland government was slammed by Human Rights and Indigenous organisations in May when they first announced they remove the provision despite the bipartisan committee previously finding evidence of any benefit to doing so was unclear.

The Queensland Community Safety Bill would amend the Youth Justice Act to overturn the principle of detention as a last resort for children — a key tenet of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and the United Nations' convention on the Rights of the Child, which Australia has signed and ratified.

A large group of legal and human rights organisations, including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service, the Queensland Law Society, the Youth Advocacy Centre (YAC), and the Queensland Human Rights Commission, urged the bill to be rejected.

The Qld Government are removing the principle of detention as a last resort for children. This is truly deplorable and goes against every single thing that advocates, experts and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommend.

— Maggie Munn (they/them)🇵🇸 (@MaggieMunn) April 30, 2024

In their submission to the committee, YAC said: "[N]o state has the positive obligation imposed by the phrase 'a child should be detained in custody where necessary', even with the caveat of the insufficiency of other measures. Every other state and territory in Australia either has detention as a last resort, or provides that detention is 'only' available if other lesser options are not appropriate."

The department has sought to highlight the amendments as "clarifying provisions," the committee noted, and, according to the proposed bill's statement on its compatibility with human rights, the amendments "do not engage any human rights".

However the community safety and legal affairs committee said in its report released on Friday: "The amendment to the sentencing provisions contained in the Bill may result in a child being detained in contravention of human rights conventions, both domestic and international."

They argued that the clarification surrounding the principle of 'detention as a last resort' by the department "raised issues regarding the ability of the court to serve the best interests of the child and ensure the rehabilitation of the child is promoted in the course of the proceedings".

"There appears to be agreement that the effect of the amendment may allow for detention to be ordered in circumstances other than where there are no other reasonable options available," the committee said.

Nonetheless, they recommended passing the bill, arguing that whilst "it may impinge on the rights of the child…it is arguably justified as it takes into consideration the rights of the child, other non-custodial factors, and community safety concerns".

Queensland's Human Rights act allows legislation to impinge any human rights as long as it gives consideration to what those rights are before doing so. However, even if they do not properly do so, the legislation remains valid.

Last year the government twice suspended the act, to make breach of bail a criminal offence for children and to allow children to be housed in adult watch houses.

The Labor government has regularly said they make no apologies for their tough stance on crime.

Three members of the committee, including independent Sandy Bolton and two Liberal National members, said they had reservations with the findings, with the two LNP members saying the bill needed to go further.

It comes in the wake of recent Closing the Gap data which shows Queensland incarcerates more Indigenous young people than any other state in the country.

Despite a near-constant fear mongering in the media and by the LNP opposition about youth crime, data from the Queensland Police reveal youth crime rates have fallen to near-record lows.

These include a reduction in the rate of total offences, the rate of youth offences, the total number of unique youth offenders, and the rate of unique youth offenders.

However, despite this, an average day in 2022-23 saw Indigenous young people incarcerated at a rate of 46 per 10,000, — the highest in the country.

On an average day, 201 First Nations children were in detention in Queensland, more than 45 per cent of the entire Australian Indigenous population behind bars.