Lingiari MP Marion Scrymgour calls for income management response to child neglect

Lingiari MP Marion Scrymgour says families of neglected children should be ‘income-managed and made subject to co-ordinated intervention by relevant agencies’.

MP Marion Scrymgour says ‘harmful levels of drinking in young families, especially by women who are pregnant or the mothers of young children’ is ‘a major causal factor in child neglect’. Picture: Sierra Haigh

Lingiari MP Marion Scrymgour has called on the NT government to establish a Queensland-style Family Responsibilities Commission with the power to enforce compulsory income management where children are being neglected.

The Labor MP’s comments come in response to what she called “irresponsible, publicity-seeking claims” of “rampant” child sexual abuse in Alice Springs made by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton last week.

Ms Scrymgour said investigating such allegations was “hard enough as it is” and not helped by Mr Dutton’s comments, “which identify no-one and are therefore calculated to cast suspicion over everyone”.

“That is how the Intervention started,” she said.

“There is a whole generation of young people out there who have grown up with that shadow over their innocent fathers, uncles and grandfathers.

“The resulting social unravelling contributes to the crime we see in Alice Springs today.”

Instead, Ms Scrymgour said it was “now time” for an initiative similar to the FRC, which has the power to place welfare recipients on income management, to be established in the Territory.

“Families where children who aren’t being properly protected or cared for can be income-managed and made subject to co-ordinated intervention by relevant agencies,” she said.

“I have publicly questioned Territory Families Minister Kate Worden and her department in terms of policy and outcome, but I would never question their genuine commitment to protecting children.”

Ms Scrymgour said “harmful levels of drinking in young families, especially by women who are pregnant or the mothers of young children” was “a major causal factor in child neglect”. “Child neglect in Central Australia and elsewhere has for many years been a society-crippling issue in the Northern Territory,” she said.

“It predates the Intervention and has continued after the Intervention.”

On its website, the FRC describes itself as “a statutory body conceived by Aboriginal Australians and driven by community members”, whose purpose is to “support welfare reform” and “restore socially responsible standards of behaviour, local authority and wellbeing”.

The commission receives notifications from Queensland government departments “when a community member is not meeting predetermined obligations”, including around school attendance, harm or risk to a child, domestic violence and tenancy issues.

Following a notification, a community member can be served with a notice to attend a conference with the FRC, which can then issue warnings, initiate a Family Responsibilities Agreement, direct them to support services or place them on an income management order.

Territory Families Minister Kate Worden said the NT government was “open to discussing with the federal government any proposals” to establish an FRC in the Territory.

“The Northern Territory is interested in how these arrangements could benefit Territorians and would need to ensure any decisions are made in consultation with our stakeholders,” she said.

“The Northern Territory is working closely with the Federal government to implement Safe and Supported: the National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children 2021-2031.”

Read Ms Scrymgour’s full statement below.