Media Release

23 April 2018: KAP Leader and Federal Member for Kennedy has pleaded with the State Government to stop focusing on the ‘problems’ and start listening to the ‘solutions’ proposed by the KAP State Members which could see the out-of-control saga that is youth crime and prison overcrowding in North Queensland solved straight away.

The cry comes after the Townsville Bulletin reported one in five prisoners in a Townsville correctional facility could be sleeping on the floor, yet failed to follow up the article with a proposed solution.

Mr Katter said he was tired of reading about the problems and constant plethora of non-committal statements that keep appearing in these articles like ‘undertaking a range of activities to alleviate the problem’, ‘the system is in trouble’, and that it was time for real rock-solid solutions to be given urgent priority.

Mr Katter said the KAP’s Relocation Sentencing model is ready to go and which if given support tomorrow, could be up and running straight away, a far cry from the three years projected should another prison be built.

“At the present moment, there are only two options to child safety workers and the magistrates – probation, which is a bloody joke, or prison, delightfully referred to as ‘detention’,” Mr Katter said.

“The young prisoners, juveniles, cost us around $560k a year and incarceration produces nothing except for the three months or six months that they are off the streets.

“What relocation sentencing does is provide a third option. It is a return to what was the law a couple of hundred years ago – which is banishment.

“So the offenders will vanish from Townsville and reappear near Kajabbi in the far west.

“They can’t run away in the hottest place on earth, north of Mt Isa.

“And whilst the concepts are still being put together, clearly they will build their own houses. They will source their timber and grain and be taught skills for working in a meat works and butcher shops, as well as working cattle.

“They will return to society with a lot of life skills, and a lot of confidence in themselves.

“And for the people of Townsville, well, they won’t be in Townsville anymore and that is the important thing.”

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