Authors of NT child safety review 'very confident' advice will be actioned quickly

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains the image of an Indigenous person who has died, used with the permission of her family.

The authors of the report that found extensive failings in the Northern Territory's child protection system say they are "very confident" most of the recommendations will be actioned in the next six months.

However, some advocates claim the report has not given Indigenous people a say in the process.

The new report, which examined the NT Department of Children and Families' conduct surrounding Alice Springs five-year-old Kumanjayi Little Baby before her alleged murder in April, was tabled in the NT parliament yesterday.

It made 45 recommendations and called for a "system-wide reset" of child protection in the NT, and found the little girl's death should not be considered solely as an individual case management failure, but as the result of "broader and interconnected shortcomings in the child protection system".

Former NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb, who co-authored the report with long-time NT public servant Greg Shanahan, said there was not "one single point of failure", but rather "a number of things that, taken together, it all adds up".

"I asked this question many times, 'if I had a child in one part of the Northern Territory and the risk assessment was applied or signs of safety was applied, would they get the same response at every department office?' And the answer was no, because often the assessment could be viewed through a different lens," she said.

"So we need to take out the gap in that so any risk to any child should get the same in treatment."

Ms Webb said checks carried out on people caring for children on safety plans was one of the priorities identified in the report.

"There needs to be an audit of the current safety plans in place in the Northern Territory right now to make sure that those checks are done and that people on [safety] plans now are appropriately assigned protective roles," she said.

Mr Shanahan said he had "heard rumours" about child protection over the years and acknowledged the workers had a "tough gig", but said part of the struggle was worker retention, which was felt across the Northern Territory.

"You often get the inexperienced ones and the real challenge is how do you keep the ones you've trained up, you've given the experience to, to stop them walking away."

Advocates criticise report in NT's 'tsunami of need'

Child protection advocates have criticised some aspects of the report, with one saying the "tsunami of needs in the Northern Territory" hasn't improved because Aboriginal people aren't being listened to.

Peak national advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, SNAICC, said the report fell "short of being the much-needed catalyst to make Territory Aboriginal children and families safer".

SNAICC chair Muriel Bamblett said while she accepted the report's findings, "the solutions put forward by Aboriginal people over decades have not been heard".

"[Systemic change] has to happen," she said.

"In 2009 and 2010 I did an inquiry into the NT child protection system and what we saw was a system that was broken.

"We talked at the time about a tsunami of needs in the Northern Territory [and] the situation hasn't got better because, in my point of view, we try to put a western construct of child protection into the Northern Territory, where culture and protective factors are there and communities know what they need to do.

She said child safety was not created in isolation and that it relied on other protective factors like housing, access to health services and family supports — areas she said the NT government had the power to address.

"Neglect and poverty put our children at greatest risk, until all governments seriously address these issues, our children will remain vulnerable," she said.

North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA) chief executive Ben Grimes said while he substantially agreed with the report's 45 recommendations, they were changes his organisation and other stakeholders had called for over many years.

"We've directly written to [Minister Robin Cahill], outlining very similar concerns quite a long time ago, and there's been four coronial recommendations that have been handed down since this minister took the portfolio, and those recommendations are almost identical to the recommendations that we see in this current report," he said.

"If the minister was actually serious about putting the interests of children first, she would have started listening to the coroner's recommendations and the recommendations of frontline organisations two years ago, and we could be two years ahead of where we are today."

Mr Grimes said the government must accept responsibility for the lack of action in cases like Kumanjayi Little Baby's that had occurred in the two years since they came to power and that the premise of the report "could have been done much better".

Mr Grimes reiterated his organisation's concerns that the government was "pushing a false binary narrative" that child protection was "about ignoring safety or removing children".

He said First Nations families needed to hear that the government was willing to listen.

"Based on what we've seen in the last two years, there is very limited willingness to listen."

The North Australian Aboriginal Family Legal Service in the Northern Territory yesterday also criticised the Country Liberal Party for not involving Indigenous people when it commissioned the report.