Commissioners call on WA, SA and NT governments to address gaps in child protection legislation

Children’s commissioners from WA, SA and the NT are calling on their governments to urgently collaborate on child protection legislation as vulnerable children are lost between states.

Children's commissioners from Western Australia, South Australia and the NT have called on their governments to urgently address gaps in child protection legislation they say are causing vulnerable children to be lost between jurisdictions.

The NT and WA Children’s Commissioners and SA Children and Young People’s Guardian met with the NPY Women’s Council in Alice Springs on Thursday to demand action on the issue.

As NPY Women’s Council chairwoman Margaret Smith and director Rene Kulitja tearfully explained through a song about children being taken away by “willy-willys”, “our kids are being swept away, to other countries, far away”.

Ms Smith said the NPY Women’s Council, which is composed of women from communities in the cross-border desert regions of WA, SA and the NT, had been campaigning for action on the issue since 1991.

SA Guardian for Children and Young People Shona Reid (left), WA Children's Commissioner Jacqueline McGowan-Jones, NPY Women’s Council chairwoman Margaret Smith and acting NT Children's Commissioner Nicole Hucks are lobbying for urgent action from governments to collaborate on child protection laws. Picture: Laura Hooper.

“The main reason we have been having this meeting is to have the three states to have one particular law for the kids, one law only, instead of having it in three different states,” she said.

“We will keep talking about this for many years until it is sorted out”.

WA Commissioner for Children and Young People Jacqueline McGowan-Jones explained Aṉangu children were “disappearing” into different systems under current legislation.

“The systems use a white man’s border, they don’t use our cultural borders, and we are one family across that cultural block, and they don’t look hard enough,” she said.

“Then some of our children may be at risk because if they leave Ngaanyatjarra lands and go to Pitjantjatjara lands, then WA will close the case and there is no follow up for these children.

“So we want governments to be able to collaborate and work with NPY women to find our children’s family early, keep them safe and connected to their culture, family, language and home, and make sure that they don’t disappear from our communities and have another Stolen Generation.”

NPY Women’s Council chairwoman Margaret Smith (left), WA Children's commissioner Jacqueline McGowan-Jones, SA Guardian for Children and Young People Shona Reid, NPY Women's Council director Rene Kulitja and acting NT Children's Commissioner Nicole Hucks discuss children being lost in between state and territory jurisdictions. Picture: Laura Hooper.

She said legislation was one of the biggest barriers to collaboration but pointed to changes which allowed cross-border policing as an example of what could be achieved.

“If we can do it for cross border policing, we should be able to do it to protect the most vulnerable,” she said.

NT acting Children’s Commissioner Nicole Hucks said the state and territories needed to take greater accountability for children slipping between the gaps.

“It’s not good enough right here and right now that when a child from the NT crosses a border to the South Australian jurisdiction that the NT closes on that case, because there’s a great risk that the potential harm and risk for that child will be elevated,” she said.

“It’s not only about risk identification as well, it needs to go further to understand that culture is a protective factor, children that are removed from their family and community and placed elsewhere they need to maintain that connection.

“If that doesn’t happen we are failing these children right here, right now.”

She said there had been significant conversations on the issue over the years but little traction.

“As the acting Children Commissioner for the NT I’ve come together with the WA Children’s Commissioner and the SA Guardian to lobby governments for some greater action on this,” she said.