NT Children's Commissioner Resigns Amid Child Protection Law Changes

The Northern Territory children's commissioner has resigned as the Country Liberal Party government prepares to pass child protection changes strongly opposed by Aboriginal, health, legal and human rights groups.

It comes as parliament's government-dominated committee has cleared the way for the amendments despite widespread opposition and confusion within the government about a key aspect of its legislation.

In a three-two split, the Country Liberal Party (CLP) majority on the NT's parliamentary scrutiny committee this week recommended passage of the bill, while the two non-government members were opposed.

As written, the changes potentially lower the threshold for child removals and will make it easier for Aboriginal children to be placed permanently with non-Indigenous carers or in group homes.

The government says the changes will make children safer and provide greater stability for young people removed from their families.

CLP committee chair Oly Carlson wrote in her foreword to the 169-page report that "many" submissions and witnesses opposed the bill.

But she said "on balance, the committee considers that the [Department of Children and Families' written] responses adequately address the issues raised by stakeholders".

Independent MLA Justine Davis and Labor's Dheran Young wrote dissenting reports calling for the legislation to be paused or withdrawn.

Aboriginal groups blindsided by the introduction of the bill in the wake of Kumanjayi Little Baby's death in Alice Springs said the scrutiny committee conclusion was disappointing but unsurprising.

"This was a political exercise from the get-go," Catherine Liddle, chief executive of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC), said.

"This recommendation flies in the face of everything we've learned over generations.

The changes are supported by the Foster and Kinship Carers Association of the NT and Liberal Party senator Jacinta Nampinjinpa Price, with the committee's report also citing supportive submissions from the NT Police Association and the Australian Christian Lobby.

The vast majority of the 150 submissions to the inquiry opposed the changes, including national child safety organisations as well as Aboriginal, health, legal, domestic violence and human rights groups.

Children's commissioner hands in resignation over changes

In a statement released this afternoon, NT Children's Commissioner Shahleena Musk said she had handed in her resignation and would be stepping down next Thursday over her "effective sidelining" on the law changes.

She said her decision "has not been made lightly" and "reflects growing concerns about the current environment for independent oversight, evidence-based policy development and transparent decision-making in the Northern Territory".

"In particular, I have been unable to support the Northern Territory Government's approach to substantial and wide-reaching changes to child protection laws," she said in the statement.

"In my view, reforms of this significance must be grounded in evidence, informed by those with frontline experience, and developed through genuine consultation with experts, independent institutions and frontline organisations established to protect children and promote accountability.

"My role exists to provide independent advice, scrutiny and advocacy on behalf of vulnerable children and young people. Excluding or diminishing that role weakens the safeguards that Territorians rightly expect within our child protection system."

Ms Musk also said she was "increasingly concerned by trends that suggest a reduced commitment to transparency, accountability and evidence-based decision-making" in the NT, noting independent statutory offices played a vital role in good governance.

Committee 'unclear' on threshold for removing children from families

The scrutiny committee majority — made up of the CLP's Oly Carlson, Laurie Zio and Clinton Howe — proposed one minor drafting change to the 50-page bill.

In addition, despite deeming it "adequately drafted", the majority also recommended their government clarify the proposed change to the threshold for child removal, describing the intention as "unclear".

Currently, NT law states that a child may only be removed from their family if there is an unacceptable risk of harm.

Under the proposed changes, caseworkers instead "must" remove a child if there is "a significant and likely risk" of harm.

The committee noted warnings the change would result in more unnecessary child removals and evidence the proposed threshold departed from established case law and would create uncertainty for caseworkers and courts.

Despite its request for clarification, the committee said the Department "did not advise whether it was intended [for the change] to alter the threshold for removals."

The report recommended the government table another explanatory statement clarifying whether it intended to alter the threshold "or merely restate the existing threshold using different language".

A spokesperson for the NT Minister for Children and Families, Robyn Cahill, said the government would consider the committee's recommendations.

Independent calls for overhaul of scrutiny committee

Opposition Leader Selena Uibo issued a statement on Thursday calling the scrutiny committee process "a tick-box exercise, not a genuine process to listen, test the evidence and improve the bill".

"[T]he CLP [has] ignored Territorians, ignored experts and ignored Aboriginal voices, and is pushing ahead with laws the evidence shows will put more pressure on a broken system," she said.

Dissenting committee member Justine Davis said the majority committee members' recommendations did not reflect the evidence the body had heard.

She credited the CLP with reinstating the scrutiny committee after it was abolished by Labor but said the government-majority set-up was inappropriate.

"We need to be saying, and Territorians have a right to say, is this committee actually working?" she said.

"Is the parliament actually working to make sure that it's making the best law it can for everyone here in the Northern Territory?"

SNAICC's Catherine Liddle said the government was shirking responsibility to properly fix "a child protection system in desperate need of reform".

"What [the government's bill] does is unroll decades and decades of evidence and decades and decades of advocacy to put in place a framework that is fundamentally about how we ensure that children who have historically been over-represented in child protection systems — and as a result harmed through those interactions — were safe," she said.

The government is widely expected to use its majority to pass the legislation when parliament sits later this month.