At the end of year 4, I said goodbye to my classmates and my teacher. I was a little sad, a little excited: the next year, I was to change schools. The new year began, and I entered a new world. Lunchtime was handball against the wall or cricket, the wickets metal bins. I didn’t get on with my new teacher. Two kids made my life difficult: they’d be nice to me and then they wouldn’t. And I made a new best friend.

I summon this because I have been trying to remember what it was like to be 10. In much of Australia, that is the age at which you may be judged criminally responsible for your actions. New laws in Queensland, introduced last week under a slogan chilling in its childishness – “adult crime, adult time” – mean 10-year-olds will now be sentenced as adults if they........

© The Sydney Morning Herald