Agreement to raise Australia’s age of criminal responsibility to 14 unlikely as states go own way

States and territories are set to strike out alone with reforms to raise the age of criminal responsibility, with local politics and interstate sparring dampening the prospect of reaching a national consensus.

The Australian Capital Territory plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 within a year, but the Queensland government made an election commitment to not change the law amid a sustained attack about being “soft on crime”.

Other states remain non-committal, but have hit out at Queensland and at whichever other jurisdiction leaked details of a draft report into the proposed reforms to The Australian.

The report had been commissioned after a meeting of the council of attorneys general last year, and was discussed at its most recent meeting on 31 March.

Related: Australian Capital Territory votes to raise age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14

Western Australia’s attorney general, John Quigley, who led the working group that produced the draft report, described the leak as regrettable, saying he wanted the report released but other jurisdictions had objected.

Quigley did not dispute the contents of the newspaper report, which stated that the draft contained a recommendation to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years.

It also reportedly offered alternatives: raising the age to 14 with exceptions for serious crimes, or, if neither of those options is agreed, raising the threshold to 12 with the age of detention set at 14.

“There’s some states who object to the release of that report, I’ve urged for its release to inform the public debate, I noticed that one jurisdiction must have leaked it to The Australian,” Quigley said.

“The conclusions of the report are on the front page of The Australian, but regrettably all of the weighting information from the medicos and the police, everybody that supports reforms is still hidden from the public, and I believe that is regrettable, very regrettable.”

Multiple states and territories said the report’s recommendations had not been discussed nationally in any detail, and there was no specific proposal currently being considered.

South Australia’s attorney general, Vickie Chapman, criticised the Queensland government for making an election commitment to not change its laws ahead of last October’s poll, skewering any possibility of a consensus.

“My preference has always been that we pursue a nationally consistent approach to the minimum age of criminal responsibility, but after the Queensland government made a pre-election commitment not to change its current legislation, this opportunity was lost.”

She said custodial sentences for children under the age of 14 were rarely imposed in South Australia.

“I will continue to discuss this matter with my colleagues interstate and nationally, as well as work with those on the ground in South Australia who best understand the system and possible implications of change.”

A government figure from one jurisdiction said the Queensland government’s decision highlighted the difficulties in establishing a consensus: the fact state and territory election cycles did not match meant that any given government at any time could be afraid it would open itself up to opposition attacks about its law and order credentials should it support the move. A Queensland government spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

A national framework is viewed as beneficial by multiple jurisdictions for several reasons, despite each government being able to press ahead alone if required.

This is because, among other factors, the age of criminal responsibility for federal offences also remains at 10, meaning it would be possible for a 10-year-old to be charged with a federal crime even if they lived in a jurisdiction where the age had been raised to 14.

The burden of dealing with other legal complexities in the reforms would also be eased should the jurisdictions work in tandem.

Shane Rattenbury, the ACT attorney general, said the territory government had favoured a national approach, but decided it had to make the reforms as soon as possible. He stressed that it was not about letting children escape responsibility for their actions, but opening alternative pathways that could intervene in their lives sooner for the betterment of the child and the community.

“The international benchmark is 14 and the evidence that has been presented to us from a neurological point of view, which is where the UN position is based on, says 14.

“This is about keeping young people out of the criminal justice system and making an intervention that will redirect their life.

“We just don’t want to see them locked up in custody.”

Related: Australia urged to follow UN advice and raise age of criminal responsibility by four years

The ACT is believed to charge less than 10 people aged between 10 and 14 with criminal offences in any given year.

But the difference between raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 or 14 in some states could be significant, particularly for the Indigenous population.

The Northern Territory government had signalled it would implement a recommendation of the Don Dale royal commission to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 12 and ban the detention of under-14s except for serious crimes, but the law remains unchanged, more than three years later.

In recent times, every child in NT youth detention has been Indigenous. A NT government spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

In Victoria last year, Crime Statistics Agency data shows there were 61 offender incidents involving 10-year-olds, 154 involving 11-year-olds, 489 involving 12-year-olds, and 1,243 involving 13-year-olds.

Offender incidents are offences or crimes that have been recorded, meaning one 10-year-old could be suspected of multiple offender incidents. An offender incident will not necessarily result in a criminal charge.

If the age of criminal responsibility was lifted in Victoria to 12, for example, there would have been 215 less offender incidents recorded last year, with that number increasing to almost 2,000 if the age is raised to 14. The Victorian government declined to comment, but the acting premier, James Merlino, said on Thursday that raising the age was a “significant issue” that was being looked at closely.

In New South Wales on Thursday, a parliamentary committee investigating Aboriginal incarceration recommended raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years old to reduce the rate of imprisonment. The NSW government did not respond to a request for comment.