There is something dispiriting about Senate inquiries.
Organisations — some working on the smell of an oily rag — trek to their respective capital cities to give evidence they have provided repeatedly, only for governments to put it in a report, offer platitudes and then move on.
The youth justice inquiry — delayed and obscured — is the latest example. Witnesses told of the horrors of youth detention, of the most vulnerable people in the country going from child protection to prison — a literal failure of the state.
Nearly everyone was clear: the age of incarceration needs to be higher than 10.
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Legal advice has said the Commonwealth could force states to make 14 the minimum age of incarceration, using the external affairs powers. This argument was echoed by Senators Lidia Thorpe, David Shoebridge and Andrew McLachlan — the latter a Liberal — in supplementary recommendations to the inquiry's final report.
The PM knows this — he didn't need an inquiry. He knows the legal advice. He has heard all these calls. His government rejected a UN recommendation to do just this as recently as this year.
He's constantly said law and order is a state issue — they "have every right to put the safety of their communities first," he said in February. National Indigenous Times has even previously reported on the lengths the government has taken to push back against calls to raise the age.
There is every chance the inquiry's mountain of evidence will sit alongside Treaty, truth-telling and other measures that are not radical, but which the government has placed in the 'too hard basket' after the Voice referendum.
"The Prime Minister has the responsibility to step up and take action to end the mass incarceration of our children," NATSILS Chair Nerita Waight wrote in National Indigenous Times last week.
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For those who haven't listened to doctors, legal experts and Indigenous organisations working on the ground, the evidence is simple: children at ten years of age should not be held in prison.
This isn't excusing alleged behaviour; it is recognising that incarceration does not address the underlying causes of offending. The inquiry heard how punitive responses only increase the likelihood of further offending and harm — to themselves and the community.
It is not simply a left/right issue, as Senator McLachlan showed; it is a medical consensus issue. Smoking causes cancer, alcohol is bad for the liver, locking up kids is bad for everyone.
Many young people in detention in WA, the inquiry heard, had an "unprecedented amount of neurodisability and neurodevelopmental disorders, including fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, and undiagnosed intellectual disability".
In the NT, 77 per cent of children under 14 detained in detention had unmet mental-health, cognitive-disability or health needs.
It certainly is bad for the taxpayer, who spends more than a billion dollars a year to incarcerate children in Australia, almost half of whom nationally are on remand.
It's a system "failing children, failing taxpayers and failing communities," Justice Reform Initiative Executive Director Dr Mindy Sotiri says.
States and territories across the country have maintained policies that allow ten-year-olds to be incarcerated. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody — which said Indigenous incarceration should be a last resort — is too often thrown into the wind, seemingly no more than a pesky, inner-city report.
So too the Closing the Gap agreement.
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It is not just conservative governments in Queensland and the NT; Victorian and NSW — both Labor states — are being governed, as one person told this masthead, for the comment section of tabloids.
"States and territories across the country are doubling down on punitive policies that are driving the mass incarceration of our children," NATSILS general manager Nick Espie said. "This not only harms them, it makes the community less safe."
Whilst every person is right to be concerned about crime and worried about their safety, the inquiry's findings don't support claims of a national youth crime crisis.
"Current media coverage suggests that crime by children and young people in Australia is on the rise," the Senate inquiry into youth justice said. "However, other statistics show a decrease in youth crime, suggesting there is no 'youth justice crisis' in Australia."
That statement sits uneasily alongside much of the public commentary about youth crime, where individual incidents can become evidence of a broader trend.
"If a tough-on-crime approach worked, the Territory would be the safest place in Australia," former NT Child Commissioner Shahleena Musk told the inquiry. "Yet, as the data shows, a punitive response reinforces the very behaviour we seek to change and increases the chance of further offending."
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This government has a chance to actually listen to the experts and protect the community and children in equal measure. It has spruiked its child-safety bona fides through the social media ban.
Yet there is seemingly no greater harm to children than ten-year-olds in adult watch houses, subject to 24-hour light and surrounded by violence.
But there aren't as many positive headlines in banning that.
"So, Prime Minister, what do you want your legacy to be?" Ms Waight asked last week.
"Do you want to be the leader who kept their promise to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people? Or do you want to be the leader who wilfully presided over a nation that locked up our children for political gain?"
Don't hold your breath.
