The Queensland government's indication it will consider recriminalising public drunkenness and urination has been condemned as a "targeted attack on Aboriginal communities".
Police minister Dan Purdie said last year the government was "looking at" reversing the decriminalisation that occurred under the state Labor government in 2023.
Sisters Inside, a Queensland-based organisation that advocates for the rights of women in prison, said it rejected the proposal "in the strongest possible terms".
"We have been here before," said Sisters Inside CEO Debbie Kilroy.
"Public drunkenness laws were the entry point for countless Aboriginal deaths in custody. Reintroducing them is not just reckless, it is an act of historical denial."
Minister Purdie made the comments in June last year, saying Labor's changes had "hamstrung" police.
The laws' reintroduction would align with the state government's broader policy of being 'tough on crime', most notoriously its 'adult time, adult crime' legislation affecting the youth justice system.
"The wave of antisocial behaviour sweeping across regional Queensland communities – including Maryborough, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns – is the direct result of a decade of Labor’s weak watered-down laws, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Queenslanders are disproportionately the victims of crime," said a government spokesperson.
"We are making Queensland safer with more police and stronger laws to help curb antisocial behaviour and restore safety where you live, after total crime rates increased 27 per cent under Labor."
Ms Kilroy dismissed the government's messaging around community safety.
"Every time governments claim these laws are about 'safety', Aboriginal families hear something else: more police contact, more arrests for poverty, more time in cells, and more risk of death," said Ms Kilroy.
"If the LNP was serious about safety, it would be investing in housing, health services, alcohol and other drug support, public toilets, and community-led responses.
"Instead, it has reached for the bluntest and most dangerous tool it knows: criminalisation."
The 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody specifically recommended abolishing public drunkenness laws.
Labor's decriminalisation in 2023 made Queensland the last jurisdiction to enact the recommendation.
However the election of several governments on platforms of more punitive penal codes has seen that walked back.
The Northern Territory's Country Liberal Party legislated fines for "nuisance" public drunkenness in October 2024.
Several of the Queensland government's changes have been in contravention of the Human Rights Act, and the state's human rights body also condemned the proposal to recriminalise public drunkenness when it was flagged last year.
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