Legislative Council, Thursday 10 April 2025

Ms FORREST - With any legislation I ask, what is this a problem that we need to fix? It is already illegal to carry such a dangerous item in a public place. It seems that the fact that it is illegal has not been an adequate deterrent. We have seen from the police, in the trial they did under the current legislative provisions, where there were 213 searches with wands conducted. There were 54 seizures from 213 searches, where 42 of those were knives.

It is not just deaths that occur from knives, it is terrible woundings. When I was doorknocking in my electorate in 2023, I knocked on one door in Burnie and one in Somerset, I did knock on more than two, and two of the people that I doorknocked were people who had been working in the emergency department the day the doctor was stabbed there.

One was heading to work soon after the event. She downloaded a little bit. I then said to her, 'Are you okay to go to work now?' She said she would after putting herself together.

The impact is not just on the victim. It is on all the people who are witnesses to this.

That is in a health facility where you should be fairly safe, because you go there when you are injured. This individual, as I understand it, had longstanding mental health issues and was not getting the care and support that they needed.

Where are we failing? We are failing to support some of these people who for whatever reason choose to carry some sort of weapon like that, that can cause that sort of harm. That doctor is incredibly lucky he is still alive; he was lucky he was in the emergency department where they have all the bells and whistles to respond.

That is not the case out in the community. It is not the case in a shop, petrol station or in all the other places.

What is the problem we are trying to solve here?

Knives, sharp instruments and dangerous items can be fairly easy to conceal. Do we need an additional tool to enable police to detect them? They have powers to wand now, on a reasonable belief.

The difference we are seeing here appears quite small. If you are looking just at the words alone, on what basis do police form a reasonable belief to reasonable suspicion? On what basis would they reach a reasonable suspicion?

I want to say that I appreciate the lengthy briefings we had yesterday because these matters were really well canvassed. We have the benefit of having heard all this information and making a determination about where we sit on this legislation based on all that, but it is not on the record. I am going to bring a bit of that to this debate, so people understand how I reached my decision.

We heard from legal representatives, a victim-survivor, police, and TasCOSS, who deal with a lot of vulnerable people who, I suggest, are more likely to find themselves being wanded regardless of whether this legislation changes or not, frankly.
The recent trial undertaken by police that I mentioned, under the current arrangements of a reasonable belief, were very concerning. There are a lot of knives being carried around in public despite the illegality of that provision or that action, and we are all aware that such weapons can, and have, caused very real harm. Sadly, we have seen a greater increase in young people carrying these items than in the adult population. Surely this must give us pause to wonder why. Why do young people feel that it is okay to carry a knife in public? We heard that some of them claim to do it for their safety. How are we failing to make a society where young people feel safe to go out without a knife? What are the underlying factors here? Why do young people feel this is an okay thing to do?

The world has changed from when I was a kid in many ways. When I was a kid, there was no social media or computers even. If you wanted to make a phone call to harass someone, you had to wait your turn at home. Then there were certain restrictions about how long you could be on it, and you were in a public place, like in a lounge room. If you wanted to get away from people who were harassing you or bullying you - and I had my fair share of that - you could just go home. If someone answered the phone and you thought you were going to be pursued by phone, you could just not answer the phone. Now, with social media and all the challenges we see there, it is pervasive. You cannot get away from it. What are we as a society doing and failing to meet the safety needs of so many young people that they feel they need to do that? What preventative measures are we actually taking to address these very real concerns?

I am interested if members of the Chamber have watched the Netflix four part series Adolescence. Some of you watched it. Compulsory viewing for everyone. If you have not watched it, you must watch it. It is an incredibly produced piece and I am going to do a spoiler alert for those who have not watched it. It is a four part story of a 13 year old boy; normal kid, normal family - whatever normal is. He has two parents and a slightly older sister. He goes to school - he appears to be in a relatively normal sort of existence.

The first episode opens with the police organising a raid. You do not know what is going on at this point, and they are in full - I cannot think what you call it - all the gear. The police are suited up, massive guns, helmets, the whole lot, and they storm into a suburban house. The family are - well, the boy is not out of bed, the girl, the daughter, is in the bathroom, and the parents are there in the house. Suddenly, the police burst in, in the full kit and the noise - I have never experienced it, but it was pretty interesting to watch in this circumstance. The parents are on the floor, the daughter is in the bathroom on the floor, they go into the boy's bedroom and arrest him on the suspicion of murder. This kid is 13 years old and fairly stressed, and he wets himself, so they give him a chance to change his trousers. He is dragged out of bed. The police are kind to him; it is not like they are brutal with him. They take him in the police car to the station and he is charged with murder.

The police are very kind because they tell him about what his rights are in a way that he can understand; he is 13. He has the right to ask for a lawyer. 'Make sure you ask for a lawyer. You are entitled to a …' I cannot remember the term they used - 'a responsible adult, you can choose one of your parents, but right now we have this man who is the person who is allocated to that until you decide.' They were helpful with this young kid and he tells his father, who he chose to be his responsible adult, that he did not do it. A young girl at school has been stabbed to death. I cannot remember exactly - I think it was six or seven times.

It is not about whether or not he did it. They have very clear evidence he did. There is video evidence of him stabbing this girl. When they are shown that, obviously it is pretty hard on his father and on him. What the story is about, however, is why he did it. It goes to issues of what is healthy masculinity. How are children abusing each other. The emojis used on social media, on Instagram in this case, that basically made this kid feel so threatened and bullied by the girl that he took that action. The role models of men in his life - his father, his grandfather and all that. It is terribly confronting. The minister has watched it. It is very sensibly done. It is so sad to think that we continue to fail these children who are vulnerable to think this is an option - and look, his mates duck for cover, everyone is upset and angry, the school is a mess.

One of the main police characters is a detective. His son goes to the same school and he is the one who informs his father about what the emojis mean so that the police have some understanding of what is going on here. If you do not know what they mean, look them up. If you see them on your kids' or grandkids' pages, you know what they mean. Just google it, it is there. It tells you what different coloured hearts mean, what symbols mean, what different coloured pills mean, all of that. You will learn a bit about it as you go through, but it is a terribly confronting thing. When you look at that, which is so relevant now in dealing with this bill, then look at - and I did challenge the minister on this in the briefing - his tough-on-youth and tough-on-crime approach is completely contrary to the way we should be behaving in response to the commission of inquiry.

To weaponise this, no pun there, in any way from what comes out of this - any criticism that the minister should level at any of us for however we vote on this, including with the member for Hobart's proposed amendment, which we will obviously speak about later, would be so contrary to the work we are trying to do through the commission of inquiry that it would be appalling. If he does it, I will call him out. I will not accept that we can behave that way and still deliver on our commitment under the commission of inquiry and if anyone was watching the commission of inquiry committee hearing when we had Legal Aid in front of us - the Hansard is not published yet but when it is out, by all means go and have a look.

Legal Aid made it very clear that this constant tough on crime and bringing youth in through the project Raven, for example, things like that and the very public attack on youth, youth crime, bad young people - is absolutely contrary to what we should be doing.

I raise that because my concern is that young people will be targeted with this legislation. I am not saying we do not need it, we should not have it. I am just saying we need to be very aware of that. I will be watching very carefully if this is likely to be successful and the reason I say this again is because, as I mentioned in the briefing, when I was in Western Australia last week, in Perth, that they have legislation that enables wanding on a reasonable suspicion. I was just walking around the streets. I was in the city, sort of near the waterfront and around the mall. I caught the train out to the football, which meant walking through town. I saw the police there, quite a visible presence. They have plenty of money in Western Australia, they can afford probably a lot more police, but I saw them wanding a number of people, a lot of people, but the only people I saw - and I am sure they wanded other people that I did not see, but the only people I saw were people who, by all appearances, were homeless. They had all their belongings in a shopping trolley; that tells me they are homeless, and those were mostly older women. They were the ones who they were wanded. I do not know what they based their reasonable suspicion on that they need to do it. But anyway, they must have had some reason. And then in the mall, it was young people. I did not see them detect anything because it all seemed to go very smoothly and no-one seemed to get upset overly. One of the homeless people was not so impressed by it, but they complied. I do fear that without proper checks and scrutiny on this, an oversight of it, we could see these marginalised groups targeted.

I say that knowing that our police have the highest regard in the nation as per the review that was done by the Productivity Commission. I commend them on their work. It is not a personal attack on any of the police officers. It is just that this is the reality, that this is what happens with these sorts of provisions often, that the most vulnerable in our community are the ones who are out in public. They do not have anywhere else to be. They do not have a home to go to and so they are in the vision of the police.

I have a home to go to. I walk directly home and I do not imagine I will probably be wanded, depending on how I behave when I am in public. Perhaps, they may have a reasonable suspicion if I start doing something quite stupid.

I think this tough-on-crime approach is a populist thing. I think we need to avoid focusing on youth because we only turn them into - in their own minds or they expect them to be - a criminal so they may as well.

We must work to support these young people and address the underlying challenges that see them there: intergenerational disadvantage, intergenerational poor educational outcomes and attainment, intergenerational poor literacy, numeracy, financial literacy, digital literacy, all of those things feed into this.

We have an obligation as a civil society to ensure that our young people do not find themselves in these situations. It is a whole-of-government approach. It is supporting young parents to be good parents. Those who have not been parented well themselves, how do we help them break that cycle? This is the work - the role of a government and a civil society.

I wanted to make those points because I will support the bill but I am concerned that we might see a disproportionate focus on young people and homeless and other people who are vulnerable because they are out and about in public places going about their business because that is the nature of their - they do not have a home to go to. When I was a young person, I was often out and about. I did have an interaction with police once. One New Year's Eve, after I finished work, we went up whitewashing. Police caught up with us - there was a group of us, still in my uniform. What did the police do? They said, 'Come on, you lot'. They took our whitewashing equipment off us. This used to be a big thing up the north-west coast, whitewashing on New Year's Eve. They tossed it over the fence, so we thought we best head off back home after that.

I think most of us, not all of us, have done some pretty stupid things in our youth that is pretty harmless. I think if we are honest with ourselves, most of us did something like that.

I think we need to be clear on this. There seemed to be some sort of concern or confusion, perhaps, that the police could only respond to this if they had a reasonable suspicion that they need to wand people because of intelligence they got. The police, I understand, will respond to a concern from any member of the public in whatever role that be, whether a school principal, the clergy, a nightclub owner, retail worker or anyone in between. If that person sees or witnesses anything that causes them to be concerned about the safety and welfare of another, whether it is because someone has a firearm, has a knife or they are driving their car dangerously, the police will respond.

The challenges, I believe, for the police are how to know who is likely to be carrying that weapon. If you can get a good description of the car - if it is a white sedan, for example - that is about the limit of my knowledge of identifying a car that I cannot read the number plate of. I cannot tell you what make or model it is. I can tell you which way it was headed, but there are lots of little white cars on the road.

This was the sort of circumstance in which the police are requesting this opportunity, to be sure, that they can target the right people. Being wanded in a public place while just going about your business is different from going through security at an airport. I make the choice to go to an airport. If I try to carry a knife in my hand luggage or on my person, it will be picked up and it will be taken from me. If I make a fuss, I will probably be kicked off the flight. That is my choice.

People who have a metal in their bodies need to carry information about that to prove, if there was concern, that they have a medical reason for that. Some people know that when they go through airport security, depending on what they might have, like a pacemaker, do not go through the scanner. They get patted down and wanded rather than go through the actual scan. We know that when we go to the airport.

The question that was asked by the legal profession was - I certainly appreciate their insights into this - is there a more appropriate way to achieve the outcome? It came down to that discussion about what is the difference between reasonable belief and reasonable suspicion?

I will just explain that as the police explained it to us. If they got intelligence from a public place, whether it be from a schoolyard, a place of worship or a retail place, that a person was seen in the vicinity wearing - sometimes you do not get a good look at these people, they might have black pants, a white top and red shoes. Red shoes are probably a big giveaway because not many people have red shoes. So, it might be easy to find that person. But if they have white sneakers on and black pants and a white t-shirt, there are lots of people who wear those sorts of clothes in public. What they were saying is, for them to be able to wand anyone they saw who fitted that description, they would have to have a reasonable belief that I was the person wearing the white T-shirt, the black pants, and the sneakers. They would have to have better intelligence than that.

Maybe there was some other defining feature about me that made it more clear that it was me. Whereas, a reasonable suspicion enables them to wand, in a non-invasive search, anyone in the vicinity wearing a white T-shirt, black pants and sneakers. It is a minor change in some ways, but it is significant. Consider all the people walking through a public place, going about their business, if it is a non-descript description, a lot of people would fit that description and may be caught up in this inadvertently. Even if it is non invasive, there are those concerns about if they pick up something else in the search like drugs and other things.

Now, we heard the police talk about trying to focus on diversion for youth. I think that is really important. We must focus on diversion, but we do not have much well-established diversion in place and that is a problem. The work with the commission of inquiry is important around this, like the new youth justice blueprint. Some would say it is moving at a snail's pace, but it will provide those diversions for young people and ensure that we can help them and understand what the underlying drivers of this are and deal with those rather than deal with the matter themselves. However, the police assure us they are not focused on the person. They cannot target people on a particular attribute; that is against the Anti-Discrimination Act. They are focused on finding the weapon itself as opposed to targeting people.

One of the members who spoke about this mentioned the review clause. I am pleased to see that there too, because we do need to keep a close eye on this. Any expansion of police powers requires review because it only takes one not so-honest and trustworthy police officer to muck it up for everybody - a bit like members of parliament really. It does need to be reviewed to ensure that we are not targeting particular groups without ensuring that we provide services and hopefully diversion. Often, these behaviours of young people can be cries for help and if we do not respond to them in an appropriate way, we miss an opportunity and they end up going down the criminality path. We fail as a society when that occurs.

There will be some people, young and not so young, who will actively choose to carry a weapon with the intent to cause harm and they should be held to account. If, however, they are doing it because they have not been supported and have not had the services and support they need, like someone with severe mental health issues who has sought help but has been unable to access it, then we have failed.

I will listen to the debate on the amendment that will be proposed. I do have some concerns about the inclusion of education facilities - not so much education facilities, but schools - which, I agree with the member for Hobart, should be safe places. The last thing we want to do is make it even harder for some children who are disengaged not to attend. Now, we need to provide services for them and make sure they can attend, but they also need to be safe when they are there.

Ms Armitage - As do the teachers.

Ms FORREST - Teachers as well. Yes. On that though, in the US - a different place to here - children walk through a metal detector on the way into the school. Do we want to get to that? I would certainly hope not, but you can understand why they do in the US.

Ms O'Connor - Through you Mr President - It still has not stopped school shootings.

Ms FORREST - I know, yes. You have to ask - well, there is a whole heap of reasons why that is in the US. We do not want to be like that in my view, but we do need to ensure that children are safe. Teachers, too. We know how many teachers are bullied, harassed, and threatened and all sorts by parents as well as students - parents can be the worst. I will listen to the debate on that, but I am concerned that we are perhaps putting it in there without any evidence of its necessity, but I support the bill in principle.