We know how to build places to hold people. Have we given the same thought to building communities that can hold them?
We talk about community safety as though it begins with policing and ends with punishment.
But much of the work of keeping people safe happens quietly, over years, in families, schools, workshops and community organisations.
It's the person who notices a young person drifting away. The teacher who hasn't given up. The Elder who makes time. The youth worker who comes back tomorrow, even after a difficult today.
It's being given something to do, somewhere to belong, someone who expects something of you and is prepared to help you get there.
These things rarely make the news. They don't come with ribbon-cuttings or grand announcements. But they are part of what holds a community together.
In Queensland, we're committing billions to new infrastructure, expanding detention capacity and introducing tougher laws.
We can count the beds, the prison places, the dollars spent and the sentences handed down.
But how do we count the young people who never reach that point because somebody was there for them?
How do we value the quiet work of a community organisation that has spent years earning a family's trust?
And what happens when that support disappears?
None of this means overlooking harm. People deserve to be safe. Victims deserve justice. Young people need boundaries and must learn responsibility.
But surely responsibility is something we also have to teach, encourage and demonstrate.
A child doesn't learn how to belong by being told they don't.
Through Goods on Country, we see young people working alongside others, learning to use tools, making beds from recycled plastic and discovering what they can contribute.
https://www.goodsoncountry.com/
There is something deeply human in making something useful, in being trusted with a task, in knowing your effort matters to someone else.
It isn't a solution to every problem. But it's a place to begin.
We often say it takes a village to raise a child.
Perhaps we've forgotten that the village itself needs looking after.
Its people need time, trust, resources and the freedom to speak honestly about what they see.
As Queensland prepares for the 2032 Olympics, we're thinking carefully about the buildings, roads and facilities we want to leave behind.
I wonder whether we're giving the same attention to the lives being shaped here every day.
Because the children growing up in Queensland now will inherit whatever we build, and whatever we neglect.
We know how to build places to hold people.
The harder, more important work may be building communities that don't let them fall through.
