Outgoing Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall has hit out at current bail legislation for children in the latest episode of The Callover podcast.
Commissioner McDougall talks about the career experiences that shaped his passion for human rights advocacy, some of the biggest challenges he faced in the job and what he sees as the way forward for human rights in Queensland.
With his time in the role ending this month, Commissioner McDougall laid bare both the growth and setbacks he navigated over his seven-year term – with the topic of youth justice coming up as a key focus.
He told host Georgia Athanasellis that the Human Rights Act, enacted in 2019, had been “completely ineffectual” in stopping the “winding back of the rights of children in Queensland”.
Commissioner McDougall addressed amendments made to youth justice legislation in recent years that created presumptions against bail for youth offenders – laws that he said left children in watchhouses for weeks on end without convictions.
“It’s one thing that does keep me up at night, to be honest,” he said.
“The thought of children spending weeks in a watch-house, which is incredibly degrading, and – I think it has to be said – causes permanent psychological harm to children.
“Removing the presumption of bail for certain offenses for children and making it lawful to detain a child indefinitely in a watch-house is just extraordinary, an extraordinary law to have on our statute books that remains there to this day.
“Those laws required an override of the Human Rights Act.”
One of the main reasons this had come about, Commissioner McDougall said, was because youth justice policy had been “effectively delegated to Queensland police”.
“That’s been the extraordinary reality of Queensland politics and it’s reflective of the almost unbridled power of the police unions in Queensland,” he said.
“That’s something that Tony Fitzgerald explicitly warned against.”
But among all the challenges, including a global pandemic that threw even the best-laid plans out the window, Commissioner McDougall also highlighted where there had been progress.
Commissioner McDougall reflected on his time at Caxton Legal Centre, when there was no Human Rights Act in place, and lawyers often had to no choice but to tell clients their human rights were “unenforceable”.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Commissioner McDougall also covers the rise in complaints, which he said have more than doubled during his term, and what advice he would give early career legal practitioners.
The Callover is a podcast created by young lawyers, for young lawyers. It is hosted by the QLS Future Leaders Committee, dedicated to inspiring a generation of connected, capable and healthy young lawyers. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favourite podcast app.
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