Reports children as young as 10 could face court in the Northern Territory without legal representation due to cuts at Legal Aid NT (LANT) have been condemned by advocates as a "betrayal".
On Tuesday, the ABC reported LANT will no longer provide free legal representation to people charged with a crime unless they are in custody, with the policy taking effect this week. It comes as the organisation strives to combat a significant projected end-of-financial-year deficit.
"Legal Aid has worked hard to try to identify efficiencies," Director Catherine Voumard told NT Lawyers. "Unfortunately, it is not possible to save the significant amount required except by drastic action."
The announcement comes as incarceration rates in the NT have surged since the CLP came to power last year. Lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10, combined with tougher bail laws, means more than 1 per cent of Territorians are behind bars on any given day.
The Territory now has the second-highest imprisonment rate in the world, with almost 90 per cent of detainees being Aboriginal.
Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe told National Indigenous Times the announcement is a "direct result of the NT Government's shameful tough on crime human rights abuses, and the Albanese Government's failure to fix the funding crisis, or hold the states and territories to account".
"Children as young as ten will now be forced to face court without a lawyer because governments refuse to properly fund the legal assistance sector," she said.
"This is what happens when you lower the age of criminal responsibility, ramp up punitive bail laws, and push more people into the system while starving legal services of the resources they need. First Peoples are suffering most because we are already over-policed and over-criminalised in the Territory."
New NAAJA CEO, Ben Grimes, told the ABC criminal cases before the courts had sharply increased since the CLP's election in August last year, saying their workload had grown by about 25 per cent without any corresponding funding.
"When you have parts of the system that are stretched and stressed, that is when mistakes get made," he said. "When that mistake is your child, or your mother, your brother, then I think we'd all say no level of mistakes is an acceptable level of mistakes."
It is understood Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby has asked NAAJA to consider "interim arrangements" to ease pressure on LANT, including referring clients to private lawyers.
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The National Network, which supports women in custody, said the announcement is "another profound betrayal of communities already being relentlessly over-surveilled, over-policed and mass incarcerated in some of the harshest prison conditions in the country".
"This decision is not occurring in a vacuum," member and lawyer Debbie Kilroy said. "It lands in the middle of a manufactured 'law and order crisis,' whipped up by governments who refuse to invest in communities and instead funnel every political instinct into punishment, policing and imprisonment.
"And now, those same governments are standing by as the most fundamental human right, the right to legal counsel, is stripped away from the very people they are targeting."
Speaking to ABC Radio on Tuesday, Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said they want funding from NAAJA diverted to LANT, noting NAAJA often refers clients to LANT because it cannot represent them due to conflicts of interest. She said this is something the "attorney-general is working through at the moment".
Ms Finocchiaro has previously defended her government's law and order agenda, arguing in August the Territory recorded 605 fewer victims of crime in the first half of 2025 — a 4.7 per cent decrease "compared with Labor".
Senator Thorpe said responsibility ultimately fell on the Commonwealth, pointing to the review of the National Access to Justice Partnership by Dr Warren Mundy. She said the review was clear: "Governments should apply Justice Impact Tests to every new law and policy so they understand the downstream impact on legal need, and this can be accommodated through more funding."
"That recommendation was ignored, and this is the predictable result - vulnerable being left with no lawyer to represent them," she said.
"First Peoples and every other Territorian have a right to legal representation. Instead of pouring billions into police and prisons, governments should fund the frontline legal services that keep people safe, keep families together, and prevent deaths in custody."
Ms Kilroy said the NT Government was showing an "astonishing lack of urgency as children as young as ten are pushed into courtrooms alone". She argued the NT's law changes had made it impossible for either NAAJA or LANT to "meet the caseload forced upon them".
"The responsibility sits squarely with government, not with the overworked lawyers scrambling to prevent injustice, and certainly not with the children now left to face court without representation," she said.
