It is better to set an ambitious target for reducing the rate of Indigenous incarceration in the ACT and fall slightly short than to have no target, the territory's new Attorney-General says.
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The new parliamentary agreement, announced on Monday, includes a commitment to reduce Indigenous incarceration rates to be in line with non-Indigenous levels by 2030.
Greens leader Shane Rattenbury, who was given the senior portfolio in a post-election reshuffle, said a review of Indigenous incarceration rates commissioned before the election should form the foundation of reaching the goal.
"It's an extremely ambitious goal but it's the sort of goal we must have if we're going to make a difference," Mr Rattenbury said.
"This will mean that we will now charge our public servants with how we're going to achieve that. It will be upon all of the ministers to contribute to that because it doesn't just sit in one portfolio.
"Right across government we will need to make policy changes, create new programs, change our budget spending to get to a goal like that. I'd rather have that level of ambition than not."
Mr Rattenbury said the review needed to have stakeholders involved in the research stage and then they needed to be involved in the implementation of its recommendations.
"We don't need to simply produce another report that simply tells us there are too many people in the criminal justice system, and to have that report sit on the shelf," he told the Sunday Canberra Times.
"I'm keen to get the feedback on the consultation that's already occurred and have my own conversations with stakeholders around what's the thing that we can do that can practically make a difference."
Mr Rattenbury also agreed there needed to be more collaboration between ACT government directorates, following a damning assessment of the territory's public service from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body.
The body in a report last month said the ACT's bureaucracy lacked transparency and needed to work across directorates to deliver programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Mr Rattenbury, the former Corrections and Justice Minister, said government ministers were very keen to work together on improving Indigenous incarceration rates.
"So we need to provide that leadership to get our agencies to break down the silos, to make sure they are collaborating," he said.
The Productivity Commission this year found Aboriginal imprisonment in the ACT had grown by 279 per cent between 2009 and 2019, more than any other state.
The average daily number of Aboriginal people in the Alexander Maconochie Centre in 2009 was 29 in 2009-10; the number had risen to a daily average of 110 by 2018-19.
Indigenous incarceration became an election issue after ACT Council of Social Service chief executive Emma Campbell said the territory's high rates of re-imprisonment - 90 per cent for Indigenous detainees - were unacceptable.
"It's a shocking reality that in the ACT Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children are locked up in youth prisons at eight times the rate of their non-Indigenous peers," she said.
"We also cannot accept the high over-representation of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people and people with disabilities in our prisons," she said.
Jasper Lindell
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
