This week, the Youth Advocacy Centre said it lost $3 million in Queensland Government funding for its bail support work. That's nineteen frontline jobs and around 350 young people a year who may lose access to the support they've come to rely on.
YAC says it has met its performance targets over twenty years. The Youth Justice Minister says the program failed to reduce offending on bail. The government is moving to a new bail support model, with Anglicare taking over delivery in Brisbane. YAC's chief executive fears the decision is connected to the organisation's public criticism of youth justice policy.
We can't establish the government's motive from outside. But we can look at the history.
In 2025, the Queensland Government ended state funding for the Environmental Defenders Office, an organisation that helps communities challenge decisions, including government decisions, through the courts. That same year, youth justice funding guidelines required service providers to obtain departmental approval before speaking to the media about funded programs.
Now a youth legal service that has spent years challenging the government's approach to young people has lost its longstanding bail support contract.
There's history here too. Campbell Newman's government cut funding to the Environmental Defenders Office in 2012. In 2014, the Abbott government introduced funding restrictions preventing community legal centres from using Commonwealth money for advocacy and law reform. Those restrictions weren't removed until 2022.
Different governments, different decisions, but the same underlying question: how independent can community organisations remain when the government they're expected to hold accountable also controls their funding?
There's another part of this history too.
Queensland has repeatedly used provisions of its own Human Rights Act to pass youth justice laws despite acknowledged incompatibilities with human rights. The former Labor government did it in 2023 to criminalise breach of bail conditions for children and allow children to be detained in police watch houses. The current LNP government used an override for its Adult Crime, Adult Time sentencing laws.
Now a bill before Parliament would remove the obligation for Queensland Corrective Services officers to act compatibly with human rights and properly consider those rights in specified decisions about prisoners, including people who haven't been convicted.
These are decisions about the checks and protections within the system, as well as how the system responds to people.
And we need to look at where that system is heading.
In 2024–25, 92% of young people in Queensland detention on an average day were unsentenced. First Nations children were 27 times as likely as non-Indigenous children to be detained.
Over the five years to 2024–25, the number of young people in detention on an average day rose 27%, while community supervision fell.
The cost of detention was $2,713.94 per young person per day. Community-based supervision cost $493.17.
That's a significant public investment and it raises a reasonable question about what outcomes we're achieving and whether we're investing enough in the people and services that can help young people before they reach detention.
The government says it is increasing funding for bail support and introducing new intervention programs. Those commitments should make a difference. But so does what happens when established services lose contracts, experienced workers leave and young people lose relationships with adults they have learned to trust.
Those relationships aren't easily replaced.
Neither is the knowledge held by people who work with young people every day, who understand their families and circumstances, and who see firsthand where government policies are helping or failing.
When organisations fear losing funding for speaking openly, the risk is bigger than the loss of an individual service. Governments can end up making decisions with less independent advice and less understanding of what is happening on the ground.
And young people live with the consequences.
The children going through the justice system today will be adults in our communities in a few years. What happens to them now, the guidance they receive, the opportunities they're given and the relationships that stay with them will help shape what happens next.
Community safety matters.
So do accountability and the needs of people harmed by crime. But lasting safety also requires investment in young people, their families and the organisations that support them.
We need people willing to listen, to stay involved and to speak honestly about what they see.
And we need governments willing to hear them, particularly when what they're saying is uncomfortable.
ABC - YAC funding dispute, 27 October 2026
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-27/yac-claims-qld-government-cut-budget-for-speaking-out/107312926?utm_source=chatgpt.com
ABC - Youth justice media restrictions, August 2025
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-23/qld-government-youth-justice-media-guidelines/105689200?utm_source=chatgpt.com
AIHW - Queensland youth justice data 2024–25
https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/youth-justice/youth-justice-in-australia-2024-25/contents/state-and-territory-overviews/queensland?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Queensland legislation - Proposed Corrective Services human rights exemption
https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/whole/html/bill.first/bill-2025-077?utm_source=chatgpt.com
