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A coalition of Aboriginal community groups and homelessness services have written to the WA government raising concerns about its proposed new Protected Entertainment Precinct laws.
Key points:
- The laws will give police power to move on violent offenders from nightspots
- It is feared Indigenous people will be disproportionately targeted
- One expert said the appeals process for the new laws “won’t happen”
Represented by Social Reinvestment WA, the organisations fear the laws will disproportionately impact Indigenous people and the vulnerable, and have asked government to address points of concern.
The Aboriginal Legal Service WA (ALS WA) also said it had not been consulted and held serious fears over the impact Protected Entertainment Precinct (PEP) laws might have.
The organisation’s CEO, Dennis Eggington, said there was little evidence PEP laws would prevent violence, and he had no doubt Aboriginal people would make up many of those hit with bans.
“This state has got to start treating its First Nations people as equals, and it’s a terrible, terrible disgrace that in 2022 after all we’ve been through, we’ve now got these orders in place,” he said.
The state government’s proposed laws will create five precincts in Perth-Northbridge, Mandurah, Hillarys, Scarborough and Fremantle, from which people can be banned from entering.
They are aimed at reducing violence in WA’s nightspots and are set to go before parliament later this year following stakeholder consultations.
Part of the legislation will see released prisoners banned from entering those areas for five years if they were convicted of committing serious violence or sex crimes in one of the precincts.
“I don’t think anyone is going to question that. Regardless of who they are, if they’ve committed those types of offences, they shouldn’t be in our entertainment precincts,” Police Minister Paul Papalia said.
The other part of the legislation will give police powers to issue anyone with an on-the-spot, six-month ban from entering any of the five areas if they are behaving in an “anti-social”, “disorderly” or “threatening” way.
ALS worried about police implementation
The government has said the laws will target behaviour and not any particular group of people.
“We won’t know how they play out in any regard until they’re enacted and they haven’t even entered the parliament yet,” Mr Papalia said.
“We’ll be watching and ensuring they’re applied fairly and achieve the outcome intended.”
But Professor Eggington said he feared Aboriginal people would wind up being targeted regardless of any good intentions.
“Yes, I do believe them,” he said.
“But they don’t understand the insidious nature of colonialism, or the fact that there are going to be officers on the ground that will see an Aboriginal person and target them, because that’s what they’ll do.
“I say this with some authority — we’ve been through the move-on notices, we’ve been through curfews, we’ve been through social behaviour orders.
“And 75 per cent of everyone who is swept up with those are Aboriginal people.”
Social Reinvestment WA co-chair Glenda Kickett said being targeted by police was a commonly held fear among Aboriginal people in WA.
“That’s just been historical practice for us,” she said.
“We don’t want to see our young people continue to be targeted and placed in prisons or detention centres, where we’ve already got a lot of over-representation of our young people.”
In WA’s adult prisons, 40 per cent of the population is Indigenous, and in juvenile detention that figure is 74 per cent.
“We all feel strongly about the way government responds to crime in this state,” Ms Kickett said.
“We’re really wanting the government to invest back into communities, rather than putting more money into apprehending people for issues that are sort of really vague criminal activity.”
‘We’re not handing them out like confetti’
The Police Minister said he was confident officers would only issue the short-term bans in the most serious of cases.
“They’re not going to be giving them out like confetti … they’ll be giving them out to the people who are probably frequent flyers,” Mr Papalia said.
“They’ll probably in all likelihood be those sorts of people who get them for a reason, they’re being aggressive, they’re being anti-social, they’re creating trouble, and they’re making it a bad place for other people who just want to enjoy an entertainment precinct.
“It’s a good thing that we’re able to exclude those people.”
ALS WA director of legal services Peter Collins said another concern was the difficulty he expected vulnerable people would face accessing the appeals process if wrongly stung with a six-month ban.
“The appeals process will be non-existent. It’s a complete furphy, it won’t happen,” he said.
“Because these people don’t have the resources or the wherewithal to be able to undertake the process.
“And legal services like the ALS are so under the pump when it comes to workloads, we are not going to be able to accommodate the needs of these people to undertake an appeals process.”
Mr Collins also questioned where the government expected people to live upon release from prison if they had previously lived in Perth or Northbridge, especially if they were homeless.
He said the best outcome would be if the legislation was scrapped altogether, and the next best would be if the government made sensible amendments following consultation.
The government has said exemptions will be in place to allow people to access services.
“My challenge to the government will be, if in six months or 12 months, those laws are showing that they’re picking up 65-75 per cent of Aboriginal people in their sweeps, then they’ve got to repeal them and fix them up,” Professor Eggington said.
“Because they promised to do that before they got into government, that they would look after Aboriginal people.”
Plans spark trauma, concerns over cultural sites
For First Nations people, the proposed legislation brings up past trauma of a time when Aboriginal people were not allowed to walk the streets of Perth without a permit or a ‘Native Pass’.
Ms Kickett said the laws could see Indigenous people traumatised again.
“It’s something that we still live with, and it’s actually that trauma of those experiences, the exclusion of our children or young people, our families, [that] is causing more trauma,” she said.
“It’s triggering more trauma for our families.”
Professor Eggington said the nature of the legislation followed a disappointing pattern.
“It smacks of the old days when Aboriginal people weren’t allowed in town after 6pm, and it actually smacks of a continued colonisation of our country,” he said.
“Unfortunately, most of our people, by the time they’re a certain age, have come into trouble with the law.”
Asked about the comparison to past laws, Mr Papalia said the PEP laws were completely different.
“This is about people who are behaving aggressively and violently and in an anti-social manner, and hurting other members of the public,” he said.
“This is about making precincts safer for people who are going about their normal business in a safe manner, and that’s a reasonable thing.”
Aboriginal groups have also raised concerns regarding access to important cultural heritage sites within the PEP boundaries, such as traditional camping grounds and the burial sites of significant Indigenous figures.
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