How to Tell Whether Queensland Is Reducing the Detention of First Nations Children

Target 11 commits governments, by 2031, to reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people aged 10 to 17 in detention by at least 30 per cent. The rate counts young people in detention on an average day, per 10,000 of the population of that age, and the baseline is 2018–19. Nationally the rate stood at 25.7 per 10,000 in 2024–25, and the Productivity Commission assesses no change from the baseline. Queensland’s rate rose from 37.6 in the baseline year to 40.6 in 2024–25, an increase of about 8 per cent, and has stood above the baseline for three years running.

One point decides many arguments. The target is national. The Commission states that there are no state and territory targets, and it assesses each state’s progress as movement from that state’s own baseline: improvement, worsening, or no change. When a page, including mine, speaks of the rate Queensland needs to reach, it applies the national commitment to Queensland’s baseline, as the Commission does. Queensland never signed a separate number, and no one can fairly say it did. It did sign the Agreement, and its own youth justice strategy states a specific focus on Target 11.

The detention counts come from the national youth justice collection, which the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare compiles from each state’s records and reports in Youth justice in Australia. The Report on Government Services draws on the same collection. Yet the two publications can print slightly different figures for the same year: the Institute reports that on an average day in 2024–25, First Nations young people were 71 per cent of those in Queensland detention and 27 times as likely to be detained; the Report on Government Services gives 72 per cent and 26 times. Before you compare any two figures, check each publication’s edition date, its age range (10 to 17, or 10 and over), whether it counts an average day or everyone detained during the year, and the population estimate it divides by. Small differences there produce small differences in the rate, and a careless comparison turns them into a false trend.

Three facts in the records carry more weight than the headline rate. On an average day in 2024–25, 252 of the 285 young people in Queensland detention, 88 per cent, had not been sentenced. Queensland recorded the highest number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged 10 to 13 in detention of any jurisdiction, 91, who were 73.4 per cent of all children of that age in Queensland detention. And police records put Queensland’s 2024–25 youth offender rate at its lowest point in eleven years, 36.8 per cent below 2014–15. Detention has risen while recorded offending has fallen, which points to the system’s response rather than to the children.

The Inspector of Detention Services, within the Queensland Ombudsman, inspected all three youth detention centres in 2025 and recorded that 60 per cent of children at West Moreton, 62 per cent at Brisbane, and 90 per cent at Cleveland identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. His report on Wacol, tabled on 8 October 2026, found the converted watch-house unsuitable for children and withdrew his own draft call to close it, because the Government’s bail Bill may fill every youth detention bed in the state. Read that sequence as evidence of capacity, not only of conditions.

Two further offices complete the picture. The Office of the Public Guardian’s community visitors see children in detention under the Public Guardian Act 2014, and the National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People, a Commonwealth statutory office since 1 July 2026, told Queensland’s Parliament that its primary recommendation was that the bail Bill not pass.

QATSICPP, Queensland’s Youth Justice Peak since May 2024, consulted 64 of its youth justice-funded members on the bail Bill. It opposes the new offence, the mandatory minimum, the “high degree of confidence” test, the removal of mandatory diversion, and the override of the Human Rights Act, and asks at the least that children aged 10 to 13 be excluded. ATSILS (Qld) opposes the Bill, warning that it will worsen the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in custody. The nearest published evidence supports them: under New South Wales’s equivalent test for children, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people were 79 per cent of the cases in which it applied and 84 per cent of those refused bail.

Note the sequence as well as the content. The Bill reached Parliament on 27 August 2026 with papers that name no organisation consulted; the Youth Justice Peak’s role was to respond, within eleven days, to a Bill already written. Whether a government shared a decision is itself a fact the record can establish.

The Attorney-General introduced the Breach Bail, Go to Jail and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 on 27 August 2026, and the Bill fixes its own commencement for 30 November 2026. Its statement of compatibility states: “It is anticipated that these reforms will increase the number of children and adults held on remand or otherwise detained in youth detention centres or police watch-houses.” Its statement about exceptional circumstances states that the Government “accepts that these new provisions are incompatible with human rights.” Neither paper uses the words Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Indigenous, First Nations, or Closing the Gap, and neither gives an estimate of numbers or cost. The Justice, Integrity and Community Safety Committee reported on 16 October 2026 and recommended that Parliament pass the Bill; Labor told the committee in writing that it will support it.

When the vote comes, read Hansard with one rule in mind. If a member calls a division, Hansard records how each member voted. If the Bill passes on the voices, no individual votes exist on the record, and the most you can report is the outcome and each party’s stated position. A claim that names who voted for a Bill passed on the voices is a claim the record cannot support.