EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
35,000 kilometres, 45 community visits, more than 260 meetings and over 65 written submissions made up the stories and solutions in the 2007 Little Children are Sacred Report. Anderson and Wild wrote that it had all been said before.
They called on governments not merely to follow the dictates of the electorate but to lead it, accepting its responsibility to protect our kids. In response, former Prime Minister John Howard ordered the army into NT remote Aboriginal communities.
Since (and before) then, numerous reports have been commissioned into the status of child protection and youth detention in the NT, often with a deliberate or by default, focus on Aboriginal children and young people.
NT Aboriginal people, communities and organisations have participated in endless consultations for these reports (and other reports and Royal Commissions). The corresponding list of recommendations is long, however implementation has been slow or non-existent.
NTCOSS acknowledges some gains were made in the two years following the 2009 Growing Them strong, together Report. Unfortunately, momentum was lost when in 2012, the newly elected CLP government dissolved the expert implementation panel of that report.
Aboriginal people and organisations, youth and social justice advocates, lawyers, NT public servants and journalists never ceased speaking up about the human rights breaches experienced by children and young people in the NT child protection and youth justice systems. What is clear from the many recommendations in this submission, is that NTCOSS has provided commentary on, and solutions to, the state of child protection and youth detention in the NT over many years.
Before listing our recommendations to this Royal Commission, we step the reader through a snapshot of our Territory, who we are, where and how we live. We know NT children are entitled to protection under international human rights instruments ratified by the Australian government, and we aim to remind the reader of those conventions and call on Territory and Federal Governments to make law and policy that does not deviate from these conventions. Following this, we provide a list of relevant national plans and standards to guide decision makers through the evidence. Theoretical frameworks are presented to explain our social justice world view. Without all these pillars, we cannot expect the evidence to make a difference on its own.
Finally, we acknowledge the courage of the recently elected Gunner government to adopt several strategies suggested by long term youth justice advocates, NTCOSS and the Making Justice Work coalition. We wish the new NT Government success in their endeavours and offer our support during their term in government.