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‘Rushed knife laws will harm Aboriginal people,’ argues ALS
NSW’s peak Indigenous legal service has criticised the new knife laws announced by the Minns government. It argues that the laws were “rushed” and that police have been given “extraordinary powers” that could result in harm to Aboriginal people and other marginalised groups.
Grace Robbie
Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) has criticised the new knife laws announced by the Minns government, arguing that the laws were “rushed” and that police have been given “extraordinary powers” that could result in harm to Aboriginal people and other marginalised groups.
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Last week, the NSW government unveiled proposed reforms to reduce knife crime and boost community safety by targeting possession of knives, especially among young people.
The proposed new laws are based on Queensland’s Jack’s Law, which will provide the police with the authority to “wand or scan people for knives without a warrant in designated areas, including transport hubs, shopping centres and other crowded places”.
Premier Chris Minns emphasised the necessity of such new legislation due to the recent “devastating outcomes of knife-related violence”.
“Our communities are still in mourning, but it’s essential that we step up to take immediate action to send a clear message that NSW will simply not accept these kinds of crimes,” Minns said.
However, Aboriginal Legal Service NSW/ACT, the largest legal service organisation for Indigenous people in the nation’s most populous state, has criticised the newly introduced laws.
Karly Warner, the chief executive of ALS, expressed concern, stating: “We know that giving police additional powers to stop and search will lead to Aboriginal people being disproportionately and unfairly targeted, impacting the health and wellbeing of community members and forcing their contact with carceral systems which put them in danger.”
The ALS warns that Indigenous individuals are already unfairly targeted by police with their “existing discretionary powers” and that providing them with more powers will only exacerbate the problem.
The legal organisation referenced a study completed by Griffith University in 2022, which uncovered the Queensland laws being mirrored by the NSW government had “no impact on violent crime”.
The study “found no evidence the powers are effective in deterring knife crime, but did uncover evidence of inappropriate use of stereotypes and cultural assumptions by police in choosing who to wand”.
“We are all devastated by recent events where people have tragically lost their lives or been injured by knife violence, but the proposed laws would not have prevented those incidents. All they will do is force more Aboriginal people and other marginalised groups into contact with police.
“Too often we see Aboriginal people – often children – speak up against police targeting and end up with police charging them with a trifecta of offensive language, resisting arrest, and assault [of] police, without having done anything wrong in the first place,” Warner said.
These law reforms were announced after the NSW Police abandoned its Suspect Targeting Management Program at the end of last year after the police watchdog discovered it had “been unlawful”.
The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission found that “the consistent overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people as STMP targets indicated the ongoing discriminatory effect of the policy”.
