AG John Jeremie Rejects Apartheid Comparison Over Special Operations Bill

Attorney General John Jeremie SC has condemned accusations of apartheid raised by Opposition MP Stuart Young during Friday’s debate in the Lower House on the Special Operations Bill.

Speaking in the Senate on Wednesday, the Attorney General rejected that comparison, saying the country is confronting a crisis of criminal violence.

“To invoke that history here while our Black children are being slaughtered in the streets of their own communities is not careless rhetoric. It demands that we examine the assumptions beneath it. What is particularly shameful is that some who have enjoyed extraordinary privilege and accumulated extraordinary wealth would lecture us on oppression while the blood of young people of colour, many of whom will never see their 20th birthday, run through our streets. We, on this side, reject that.”