Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion.
Briefing Paper No. 06/1997 by Marie Swain
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- The Children (Parental Responsibility) Act 1994 was introduced
in November 1994 and commenced limited operation in March 1995 in the towns of
Orange and Gosford. This pilot scheme has now been evaluated and the retention
and expansion of the legislation foreshadowed (pp3-11)
- In summary the Act:
(i) gives courts the power to require parents to be present at criminal
proceedings against children;
(ii) permits courts to release children on condition that they give
undertakings as to their future behaviour;
(iii) enables courts to require parents to give undertakings as to the future
behaviour of their children;
(iv) gives courts the power to require a child found guilty of an offence to
attend counselling with its parents;
(v) makes it an offence for a parent, by wilful default or by neglect to
exercise proper care and guardianship, to contribute to the commission of an
offence by a child;
(vi) permits rules of court to be made regarding the attendance of parents and
children;
(vii) allows warrants and summonses to be issued to ensure attendance of those
required;
(viii) gives police the power to remove an unsupervised child, who they believe
on reasonable grounds to be of, or under, 15 years of age, from a public place
and escort it to it's parent's home, where they consider this action may reduce
the likelihood of a crime being committed or of the child being exposed to some
risk; and
(ix) if it is not possible to take the child to it's parent's home, then the
police can take the child to a place of refuge' prescribed by the regulations.
Detailed commentary on the legislative provisions is provided on pages 11 to
22.
- While there has been support for the Act from a number of
quarters, the legislation has not been without its critics. The issues most
commonly raised by those opposed to the legislation include: it breaches
general legal principles; it breaches Australia's international obligations; it
recriminalizes what are essentially welfare issues; it allows police to harass
young people; it disregards the position of wards of the State; it impacts
disparately on different sections of the community,particularly those from a
non-English speaking background andAboriginal youth; the cost of it's
implemention is not justified; and it has attracted the dissatisfaction of many
operational police (pp22 - 28)
- Variations on the legislation can be found in other
jurisdictions, both in Australia and overseas (pp29 - 35).
