WA's laws to stay
By Roberto Jorquera and Sean Healy
PERTH — Prime Minister John Howard has categorically ruled out federal intervention to overturn Western Australia's mandatory sentencing laws. Speaking on Perth radio on February 25, Howard said that he would not use the external affairs power of the constitution against the state government.
A Senate inquiry into mandatory sentencing is also likely to recommend that only the Northern Territory's law be overturned. Labor leader Kim Beazley has called for the NT's law to be overturned but has refused to criticise WA's version. WA Labor leader Geoff Gallop explicitly backed the WA mandatory sentencing regime on February 25.
There is little difference between WA's and the NT's laws. While WA's law only applies to repeat home burglary offences (as opposed to NT's wide range of petty crimes), the principles are the same. They both target property crime for especially harsh sentencing and they both target Aboriginal offenders, especially juveniles.
Racist undertones to WA's policing are just as obvious as in the NT. On February 21, WA police arrested a 16-year-old Aboriginal for trying to steal 40c from a telephone to pay for his train trip home. Police held the boy for 24 hours.
The Aboriginal Legal Service described the incident as a "travesty of justice". A police spokesperson later described it as "a little overzealous" but rejected the accusation that police would not have arrested a white youth for the same "crime".
Premier Richard Court refused to comment on the specifics of the case but said, "The community has made it very clear they have had enough of repeat offenders".
The 16 year old is a "repeat offender"; he's appeared in court twice in three years. Magistrate Stephen Vose said, "it would need a four- or five-page record at the very least to warrant keeping a boy in custody on a charge like this".
Attorney-general Peter Foss defended his government's stance on February 24, saying the law was not aimed at Aboriginal people and had been effective in WA. Foss was opening an "Aboriginal place of significance" — a traditional bush setting — in Bunbury prison, supposedly to cater to Aboriginal people's needs. "Considering the disproportionate number of Aboriginal prisoners in custody in WA, it is important to provide opportunities for Aboriginal culture to be celebrated", he said.
Head of the Aboriginal Legal Service, Dennis Eggington, said it showed a defeatist attitude towards the problems of Aboriginal people. "It appears [Foss] has accepted what he thinks is inevitable — that a big number of Aboriginal people will continue to be in jail", he said.