Queensland community services peaks election statement
Queensland General Election 2020
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Resource the Family Matters Queensland campaign and actions identified in the Our Way Strategy and Changing Tracks Action Plan
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Queensland are 8.5 times more likely to be removed from their families by child protection services than non-Indigenous children. The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the child protection system, particularly those children in care and living away from their families, must be reduced. This could begin to be addressed by:

• Adequately resourcing the Family Matters Queensland campaign and the actions identified in the state government’s Our Way Strategy and Changing Tracks Action Plan.
  
  

Build more social housing and make renting fair
 Everyone deserves to have a safe, stable and accessible place to call home, yet there are more than 22,000 households on Queensland’s social housing waitlist, 22,000 people in the state experience homelessness and more than 30 per cent of low-income households experience rental stress. To reduce the number of people experiencing housing stress and homelessness in Queensland:

• Invest in social housing by building 10,000 units of housing each year for ten years in collaboration with the community housing sector.
• Ensure universal design in all new dwellings and increase capacity in existing dwellings to adequately accommodate people with disability and older people.
• A focus on building social housing in regional Queensland, and prioritised for people with disability, older people, people fleeing domestic violence, cultural and linguistically diverse communities, and younger people.
• Implement reforms to the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 in line with the Make Renting Fair Alliance Queensland campaign agenda.
• Measures should include ending unfair no-fault evictions, implementing basic living standards, allowing family pets in rental homes, ensuring people have access to information that may affect their tenancies, and streamlining bond refund processes.

 
Build the capacity and capability of the community services sector
The community services sector has played a central role in the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to do so as the state recovers.
With growing unemployment, financial distress and social and emotional challenges associated with the pandemic, more Queenslanders will be turning to our services for support.
The community services sector is a major employer in Queensland, and 80 per cent of the workforce is made up of women. It is vital to Queensland’s economic recovery to invest more in the social services industry and caring workforce.
Increased funding for community organisations will mean our services can meet demand, create jobs and ensure there is an adequate safety net for the growing number of people who need support:

• Support community services organisations, including NDIS providers and other federally funded services, to comply with their responsibilities under the Human Rights Act 2019 (Qld), including supporting training, updating HSQF, and supporting organisations to review and update policies and practices.
• Guarantee the indexation of funding and equal remuneration order (ERO) funding for all community services organisations.
• A long-term funding program to address the technological needs (education, devices and data) of vulnerable Queenslanders as more mainstream services increasingly move to flexible and virtual delivery of supports.

Here is the link to the latest Queensland Youth Sector News https://mailchi.mp/6d00e23b233d/yanq-e-bulletin-may-9406656

MEDIA RELEASE
 
12th July 2020
 
LNP policy position amounts to child abuse
 
 
Youth Affairs Network of Queensland (YANQ) has slammed LNP leader, Deb Frecklington’s opposition to raising of the minimum age of criminal responsibility as irresponsible. “It is very clear that LNP is playing politics with the lives of our children and the safety and wellbeing of the community, said Siyavash Doostkhah, Director of YANQ.
 
LNP’s position, that despite any decision by the Council of Attorney-Generals later this month, they “would maintain the status quo” and continue locking up children in prison, if they were to come to power in the October state election, simply amounts to neglect and abuse of children at a systemic level.
 
Putting children in prisons has proven not to be a deterrent so it’s absolutely disingenuous for the opposition leader to say they will reduce crime by “maintaining the status quo” and the incarceration of children. The barbaric and outdated practice of abusing children by locking them up in prisons instead of supporting them must stop.
 
YANQ is demanding that LNP stop playing politics with this issue. This is about our children’s lives and it is much more important than a few seats in Townsville. There is a need for a bipartisan approach which is based first and foremost on the best interests of our children. It is about supporting our children to heal and to take their rightful place in society, not pushing them through the criminal justice system which is nothing other than a pipeline to adult prisons and a life of crime. 
 
Research has clearly demonstrated that the earlier a child has contact with the youth justice system, the more likely that child will end up in the adult criminal justice system. “Youth prisons are simply a training facility for turning children into career criminals” said Mr Doostkhah.
 
The most simple, logical, humane, cost-effective and proven action will be for the government to immediately act and raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility and divert the resources to supporting children, their families and communities. Anyone that opposes this is simply an advocate for child abuse. If you lock up your own child, for whatever reason, in a cold concrete room for days or weeks to teach them a lesson, your child can and will be taken away from you and your action labelled as child abuse. There should be no excuse for anyone to treat any child in this abusive manner and this includes government departments.
 
Mr Doostkhah has vowed that, once the decision has been made by the Council of Attorney-Generals to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility, YANQ would utilize all available means through international instruments such as the United Nations, to insure Queensland children do not continue to suffer abuse by being locked up in prisons.
 
 
CONTACT:
Siyavash Doostkhah
0407 655 785
director@yanq.org.au
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Here is the link to the latest Qld Youth Sector News https://mailchi.mp/461af5326b8a/yanq-e-bulletin-may-9314012

MEDIA RELEASE
5th June 2020
 
LNP Policy to Boost Youth Crime
 
Youth Affairs Network of Queensland (YANQ) is appalled by the manner in which LNP is, once again, approaching a state election by campaigning on youth crime.
 
YANQ’s Director, Mr Siyavash Doostkhah, said “We have a situation whereby some of the conservative media outlets are fuelling the flames of a youth crime wave creating fear in our community. LNP is then responding to this manufactured fear by pointing the finger at Labor as being soft on crime. Labor in turn has been back-pedaling and reversing some of the slow incremental progress that has been made to shift public expenditure from punishment to prevention.”
 
“In all if this, young people and the community at large are the big losers. More of our tax money will be spent on outdated policy strategies which have been proven to be utter failures. This will only serve to make our communities less safe, and all of this just for short term political gain” said Mr Doostkhah.
 
In recent years we have seen the Queensland Labor Government being forced to take regressive steps, mimicking the LNP. One example is the way they have expanded Queensland’s youth prison system. This is despite credible research indicating that prevention is a much more cost-efficient way to deal with youth offending and will also result in creating safer communities. The Government knows this but as always, in particular before an election, it has been taken hostage by the conservative parties and media.
 
Mr Doostkhah has been observing the developments in the Queensland Youth Justice system for the past three decades. He is concerned that without a significant public education campaign we will continue to repeat the same mistakes and waste millions of dollars of our public tax revenue manufacturing hardened criminals. “The young people who are committing the bulk of crimes are used to being neglected and abused.  Harsher penalties will in no way deter them from what they are doing. What they need is something different in their life, something that has been missing and that is genuine love and care.”
 
It not as if we haven’t had the LNP in Government before and when you look at the statistics you will see that there is hardly any difference to the crime rates with changes of Governments. That’s because more or less all sides of politics continue to repeat the same mistake, over and over, campaigning on being tougher than the other side on crime.
 
Investment in youth work to support young people across the state has stagnated at around $20 million for many years. At the same time, we have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in youth prisons. At some stage, as a community, we should have an objective look at this situation and demand from our Governments that they invest our tax money in putting these young people on a different trajectory rather than putting them in youth prisons which serves as a training ground for a criminal career.
 
 
CONTACT:
Siyavash Doostkhah
Director
Youth Affairs Network of Queensland            
Phone: 0407 655 785          
Email: director@yanq.org.au
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