On election night in 2022, millions of Australians watched Prime Minister Anthony Albanese open his victory speech:

"I begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. And on behalf of the Australian Labor Party, I commit to the Uluru Statement from the heart in full."

On election night in 2025, Albanese made a similar promise: "We will be a government that supports reconciliation with First Nations people, because we will be a stronger nation when we close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians."

Even when the Voice referendum failed in 2023, he called for a "new national purpose" to tackle Indigenous disadvantage.

But in 2026, when it comes to justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people - who are locked up in detention at unprecedented rates - the Prime Minister is nowhere to be seen.

This morning, the findings and recommendations of the Youth Incarceration and Youth Justice Senate Inquiry were finally released.

The Inquiry Committee travelled around the country listening to hundreds of experts, and young people, on the youth justice crisis, and for the first time ever, it examined what the Commonwealth should be doing in response.

Their findings? The Prime Minister has the responsibility to step-up and take action to end the mass incarceration of our children, with one of the key recommendations that the Commonwealth introduce national minimum standards for the treatment of children in the youth justice system. We welcome this recommendation and again offer our expertise and experience to make sure these minimum standards protect children and actually work to create safer communities.

State and territory leaders have been doubling down on punitive policies and laws that do not work. Increasingly, they are locking up children, harming them and making the community less safe, all for the sake of perceived political point-scoring.

Which is why the Prime Minister must show national leadership to address this escalating crisis. We refuse to see the can kicked down the road - this latest inquiry must not lead only to another inquiry. It's time for action.

And this is what I told the Inquiry when I gave evidence. I told them how, right now, there are more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people behind bars than ever before. How, last year, 62 per cent of detained children were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander - and in some jurisdictions that number is closer to 100 per cent. How the vast majority of Aboriginal children and young people who are locked up haven't even been found guilty of a crime.

I told them why the Prime Minister must call an emergency summit on youth justice - to listen to us, the experts, about how to keep our kids from entering cycles of crime.

Because catchy taglines like "Adult crime, adult time" and "Breach bail, go to jail" sell the public false comforts for their fears: pushing a narrative that we as voters must choose between community safety and children's rights. Decades of evidence have shown that when we jail more kids, we get neither, because children who spend any time behind bars are far more likely to reoffend.

Last month, NATSILS went to Canberra to brief federal politicians on what they can and must do to address the youth justice crisis at a national level. The Prime Minister did not make himself available to attend.

The federal leaders who did attend heard from the President of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Dr Astha Tomar. She told them of the extraordinary burden of mental health conditions found among the children and young people she works with in detention:

"So why are these conditions important?" she asked the room.

"They are important because these conditions can be identified, they can be treated and they can change someone's trajectory completely. And because by the time a ten, or eleven, or a twelve-year-old with significant mental health issues arrives in detention, we may have missed many opportunities to intervene. You cannot punish trauma out of a child."

The fact of the matter is this: we know what works. Aboriginal-led programs that support children who have grown up in poverty and intergenerational trauma, and connect them with their culture, kin and community.

What I will not tolerate is debate on whether jail is an appropriate place for a ten-year-old. Whether children should be forced to wear spit hoods, spend weeks in solitary confinement or months in jail before they've even been found guilty of a crime. Whether violating their human rights, day in, day out, should be the norm.

So, Prime Minister, what do you want your legacy to be?

Do you want to be the leader who kept their promise to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people? Or do you want to be the leader who wilfully presided over a nation that locked up our children for political gain?

Don't let this report gather dust, like so many others before it.

This Inquiry is yet another clear message that you have the power to change the trajectory for our children and for the community. Don't waste it.

Nerita Waight is the Chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services.