Linda Burney has defended the federal government's handling of the crisis in Alice Springs, as well as her own job performance, in the wake of the NT government enacting the second curfew in the town in only four months.
It comes after Indigenous advocate and businessman, Nyunggai Warren Mundine slammed the government's handling of the crisis.
"I'm not really happy because I'm sick and tired of going into communities and going across Australia and seeing the c**p that is happening because of the failure of leadership," he told Sky News.
Appearing on the same channel later in the week, Mr Mundine said he was "disgusted" with the federal government and backed calls by Shadow Indigenous Minister Jacinta Nampijinpa Price for an audit on all Indigenous organisations.
"All they're doing at the moment is doing the same old same old of just chucking money at things and voting against … a review and an audit of spending and programs," he said.
Speaking at a press conference to announce funding for two Indigenous education organisations, Ms Burney said she supported the curfew in Alice Springs, having previously argued it was not the "be-all and end-all".
"I think the curfew was important," she said. "It gave the opportunity for calmness to descend on Alice Springs."
"I support very much the work that we're doing both with the Northern Territory Government and with community organisations in Alice Springs.
"The issues of Alice Springs have not developed overnight. They're complex, they're hard, and they will take time, time to resolve."
Asked to respond to calls by Mr Mundine for her to resign over the handling of the crisis, Ms Burney said: "Quite frankly, I am not too concerned about the comments of Mr Mundine".
"I have been to Alice Springs eight times. We're working with the leadership group out there. We're working with the Northern Territory Government."
Responding to the issues of violence - both in Alice Springs, and in the wider community - Mr Mundine went against the grain of other conservative commentators in the media, when he told News Corp, he "found no evidence…that locking up kids actually works".
"In fact, we've found the opposite," he said. "If you lock a kid up, 80 per cent of them you've got for life [in the justice system]."
These mirrored comments from Ms Burney earlier in the week, where she stated: "You can't arrest your way out of this".
"The judicial system is not the answer, but the community working with government is the answer. And that's very much the way in which I'm pursuing the issues," she said.
Criticism of the government hasn't just come from conservative circles, with Catherine Liddle, the chief executive of the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC), highlighting a "lack of transparency and accountability to the community," earlier this week.
She argued there had been no visible progress since a meeting between the NT and federal governments, and community groups, in March.
"SNAICC said at the time this meeting should have been the first step in designing community-led solutions to issues that have been decades in the making. This does not seem to have happened," Ms Liddle said on Tuesday.
"Concerns were also raised at the meeting about how $250m, plus another $48.8m in federal funding commitments was hitting the ground."
Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, told ABC on Thursday Labor was supporting housing a part of their long-term solution in Alice Springs but accepted it clearly wasn't coming "quick enough".
"We know we have to keep investing in housing, we have to invest in jobs, and we have to make sure our kids are getting to school," Senator McCarthy said.
