Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to visit Tennant Creek amid NT’s child protection crisis

THE NT News understands plans are afoot for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to travel to Tennant Creek following a successful visit there by Social Services Minister Dan Tehan

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is expected to visit Tennant Creek, as Minister for Social Services Dan Tehan did this week. Picture: Kym Smith

PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull is expected to visit Tennant Creek later this year.

The NT News understands plans are afoot for Mr Turnbull to travel to Tennant Creek following a successful visit there by Social Services Minister Dan Tehan this week.

Mr Tehan spent two days in the town with Indigenous Affairs Minister and NT Senator Nigel Scullion.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is expected to visit Tennant Creek later this year

“I would encourage all members of Parliament to come to Tennant Creek from all political persuasions,” Mr Tehan said. “My view is that you learn the most when you’re on the ground in a community.”

Mr Tehan said he had been confronted by some of the things he had seen during his visit, particularly the sight of young children wandering the streets late at night.

“The fact that there are young children out in the street, under 10, after 10, is confronting,” he said.

“We would hope that they would be home in bed getting ready for school the next morning.”

Mr Tehan and Mr Scullion spent Tuesday night with the Julikari Night Patrol and Youth Patrol services.

Night patrol worker Harrison Hicks said as many as 70 children aged under 16 could be seen wandering the streets on a busy night, and it was not unusual for the night patrol to have picked up their parents earlier in the evening.

“Our (youth patrol) colleagues are busy picking up the children while we’re busy picking up the parents,” he said.

But night patrol manager Simon Johnston said there had been a noticeable drop in incidents since strict alcohol restrictions were introduced in February, following the rape of a two-year-old girl.

Federal Social Services Minister Dan Tehan with Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion in Tennant Creek

“The people who come into town cause most of the grief, people in town are pretty good,” he said.

He said he expected to be busy in the next two weeks due to NAIDOC Week and the Tennant Creek Show.

Mr Tehan said there was a real commitment from the community in Tennant Creek to make it a safe place to live.

But he said it was clear that some policies from Canberra and Darwin were not working, and ending welfare dependency was crucial.

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“We need to break that cycle,” he said.

Territory Families received 1515 child protection notifications from Tennant Creek in the nine months to the end of March and completed 578 investigations.

Of those, there were 181 occasions where harm was substantiated, a 10 per cent increase on the previous year.