On 12 August 2022, the Standing Council of Attorneys-General (SCAG) agreed that the Age of Criminal Responsibility Working Group (the Working Group) would be reconvened to continue to develop a proposal to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR), paying particular attention to the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the criminal justice system.

This decision renewed previous efforts to consider whether to raise the age of criminal responsibility through SCAG, which culminated in a draft report on the MACR (the 2020 draft report) prepared by a previous iteration of the Working Group. The 2020 draft report made a number of recommendations, including in relation to an appropriate MACR, but this was not agreed to by all jurisdictions at officer level, nor provided to the Council of Attorneys-General (the SCAG predecessor body) for consideration. It was released publicly in December 2022.

The principles set out in this report are intended to guide jurisdictions when considering MACR reform within their specific jurisdictional context. Recognising that jurisdictions are now at different stages in their consideration of raising the MACR and some jurisdictions have already committed to or progressed reforms, this report sets out a principles-based framework applicable to all jurisdictions, and options for implementation are provided by way of examples, noting that implementation of detailed settings will need to be jurisdiction-specific.