Dr MARJORIE O'NEILL (Coogee) (15:06:00): Over the course of my short time as the member for Coogee, my office has received hundreds of emails from local people expressing how troubled and greatly concerned they are about Indigenous incarceration rates and the deaths of Indigenous people in custody in New South Wales. The Uluru Statement states that proportionally, Aboriginal Australians are the most incarcerated people on the planet. They are not innately criminal people yet Aboriginal children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because they have no love for them, yet the youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be the hope of our future. These dimensions of the Aboriginal crisis tell plainly of the structural nature of the problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness. The proportion of Indigenous inmates in New South Wales prisons has risen by over 35 per cent since the Liberal-Nationals Coalition came to power in 2011. Aboriginal people constitute less than 3 per cent of the New South Wales population but make up about a quarter of its prison population. Those figures are nothing short of staggering. They are a blight on our State. If black lives matter in New South Wales, now is the time to act. We cannot keep doing business as usual.

In 2018 the shadow Attorney General, and member for Liverpool, introduced a bill to establish the Walama Court, an Indigenous-specific court that would operate within the jurisdiction of the District Court of New South Wales. The court's introduction would be a significant and positive step forward for Indigenous justice in the State. Along with the Opposition, the New South Wales Bar Association and the Police Association of NSW we have previously and jointly called upon the Government to provide funding for such an Indigenous court. These two significant players in the New South Wales justice sphere presented the idea to the Government with a view to reducing reoffending rates and addressing the disproportionate number of First Peoples imprisoned in our State.

In 2018 the Bar Association made a submission to the Federal Government inquiry into Indigenous incarceration rates. It submitted that the sentencing process should take greater account of Indigenous history and disadvantage. It stated that if judges had a statutory duty to do this, incarceration rates could drastically fall. The concept brought forward by these agencies and the bill proposed by the member for Liverpool would establish a new sentencing court, known as the Walama Court, that would address the specific needs of Indigenous people within the New South Wales justice system. The court would be based on Victoria's Koori Court and the Drug Court of NSW, which have both had great success in reducing reoffending through diversionary programs.

The shadow Attorney General has previously said that the design of the Walama Court would focus on diversion rather than punishment. As I said, precedent for this exists in the Koori Court and the court would function similarly to the Drug Court of NSW, with the focus being the reduction of reoffending rates. I acknowledge and thank Teela Reid, an active member of the Walama Working Group, lawyer and Coogee local resident, and thank her for her work, who states:

The Walama Court is designed to divert Aboriginal people away from the criminal justice process and reduce police contact by involving aboriginal elders in the decision-making process within the District Court of New South Wales.

We know that a proper focus on rehabilitation rather than punitive punishment, like prisons, works. There is an enormous amount of research to suggest that investing in programs which seek to address the underlying causes of crime and divert alleged offenders away from the criminal justice system is not only more successful in reducing reoffending rates and imprisonment but also better value for money.

The current primary response to incarceration rates from the State Government is to invest in building 7,000 new prison beds within the next four years at a cost of $3.8 billion to the taxpayer. This is despite research from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicting that if nothing is done to address the disproportionately high rates of Indigenous incarceration, the cost will rise to $9.7 billion by the end of 2020 and $19.8 billion per year by 2040. Closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous rates of incarceration could generate a saving to the Australian economy of $18.9 billion per year in 2040. It is a no-brainer. The establishment of the Walama Court would reduce costs and save lives by diverting Aboriginal people away from incarceration. It would be a practical and reasonable step for change. Now is the time for New South Wales to establish the Walama Court in response to the 2020 Close the Gap target to reduce incarceration rates by 15 per cent.