The Council of Attorneys-General, made up of attorneys-general from the Australian government and all states and territories, agreed in 2018 it would be appropriate to consider raising the age from 10 to 14.The age of criminal responsibility in Australia will remain at 10 for at least another year after the nation's attorneys-general said more work needed to be done to determine alternative ways to deal with young offenders."I am driven by community safety, community safety is the most important criteria in all of this. What are the therapeutic interventions the behaviour interventions, the social support, the educational interventions that offending children need if they are not going to be dealt with by the criminal justice system?"The new public interest defence, modelled on British laws, will require a defendant to prove both that the statement was on a matter of public interest and the defendant reasonably believed that its publication was in the public interest."If there is a move to raise the age of criminal responsibility you have to identify what is the alternative for children who would otherwise be subject to the criminal justice process," Mr Speakman said.There had been "extensive consultation on this defence" which had first used the language of a New Zealand defence before the British law was adopted instead, he said.Mr Speakman said in NSW there were currently 200 young people in youth justice centres, down by a third from five years ago.
Children can be held criminally responsible from the age of eight. He was previously the Crime and Justice Editor.The issue was discussed at Monday's meeting of the Council of Attorneys-General but NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman said any decision had been deferred to 2021 to allow a working group, led by the Western Australian justice department, to examine alternatives to imprisonment.Mr Speakman said the courts were "clogged" with trivial claims and a new threshold of serious harm, also modelled on British law, would be introduced to "weed out" trivial claims before a trial."And that is where further work needs to be done. September 6, 2009 by Dave 1 Comment Should the age of criminal responsibility be raised to 16 or even 18 across the world? age-of-criminal-responsibility. Available under CC-BY-SA license. "There's an in-principle issue about whether you should raise the age of criminal responsibility at all, but if you do you need to know what is the alternative regime," he told reporters in Sydney after the meeting.Activists, lawyers and health professionals urged Australia's attorneys-general to use a law reform meeting to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14. For federal …
The United Nations recommends the minimum criminal age of responsibility be 14, but all Australian states and territories have set it at 10 - one of the lowest in the world. No other country in the EU criminalises such young children, with the age of criminal responsibility set at 14 in Germany, 15 in Sweden, 16 in Portugal and 18 in Luxembourg. Age of criminal responsibility. "There is a significant onus on those who want to make the case for change, that's why this further work has to be done. ""We again call for all state and territory governments to bring Australia in line with international standards and raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to at least 14 years so we can shut the gates of police and prisons cells to Aboriginal children once and for all," Ms Musk said.Senior lawyer Shahleena Musk at the Human Rights Law Centre said political leaders had showed "complete disregard for Aboriginal lives and the futures of Aboriginal kids in this country" and nothing was stopping state, territory and Commonwealth governments taking action.Amnesty International Australia (AIA) said nearly 600 children aged between 10 and 13 were put behind bars in one year.He said NSW was yet to be convinced the age should be raised. Child development studies have found that children under 14 often lack impulse control, and have poorly developed capacity to understand consequences. This means that children under 10 can’t be arrested or charged with a crime. "There is understandable community concern when, for example, 13-year-olds in far north Queensland are alleged to have raped a minor, and understandable community concern that kids may feel they can get away with things if there isn't some criminal sanctions attached," he said.The Australian Medical Association said the decision not to raise the age of criminal responsibility went against medical advice.Children as young as 10 will continue to be able to be arrested, charged and detained for at least another year as the nation's top law officials put off a decision on raising the age of criminal responsibility. The lowest age is indicated for countries where there isn’t a single age limit, for example where different states have different regulations (such as the USA) or there is different limits for boy and girls (such as in Iran).