Federal Senator Lidia Thorpe says the failure of the Northern Territory government and its departments to appear before a youth justice inquiry amounts to contempt.
On Monday, National Indigenous Times reported the Darwin hearings of the Senate inquiry into youth justice on Tuesday and Wednesday would hear from advocates, medical and child experts, and lawyers in the Territory, but without any Northern Territory government departments appearing or making submissions.
First Nations children and young people in the Territory are incarcerated at 27 times the rate of non-Indigenous children, while the rate of 10 to 13-year-olds in detention on an average day is the highest in the country and almost double the national rate.
The CLP government has faced criticism from experts and Indigenous groups over a series of youth justice changes since taking office in 2024, including lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 10, strengthening bail laws and reintroducing spit hoods in youth justice settings.
A Corrections spokesperson confirmed to National Indigenous Times the department would neither appear at the inquiry nor make a submission.
The NT Attorney-General, Department of Children and Families, Department of Corrections, Department of Education and NT Police had all been invited to front the inquiry, Senator Thorpe said.
She argued it was "completely unacceptable that the Northern Territory Government has boycotted this inquiry and refused to face scrutiny".
"This is an act of contempt towards the young people whose lives are on the line."
At hearings in New South Wales earlier this month, Youth Justice officials, including the executive director, appeared in person, while the Attorney-General's Department and the National Indigenous Australians Agency made a joint submission to the inquiry.
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Senator Thorpe said Indigenous children are targeted and harmed in youth justice settings in the NT, and argued the government had "chosen to hide instead of answer for its actions".
"The absence of any ministers or agency officials shows a blatant disregard for accountability," she added.
Appearing at the NSW hearings earlier this month, former Children's Commissioner Anne Hollonds said that while conducting her "Help Way Earlier" report into child justice between 2023 and 2024, she witnessed things she could not "unsee".
"At a Northern Territory police watch house last year, I asked, 'What do you do when the children are in psychological distress?'," Ms Hollonds said. "I was told they use the restraint chair."
Infamously used in the case of Dylan Voller, the image of the young man strapped to a chair with a spit hood over his head prompted the Don Dale Royal Commission. Many recommendations from that inquiry — including the abolishment of spit hoods — have since been reversed or remain unimplemented.
In a strongly worded second submission to the inquiry, the Northern Australia Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA), which will appear on Wednesday, expanded on evidence first given in 2024, highlighting rising incarceration rates, extended periods on remand and violent assaults in custody across the Territory.
The organisation said government changes had led to "worsening youth justice outcomes, unmet care needs, and the further criminalisation of Aboriginal children and families", adding they were "all of which are widening the gap, not closing it".
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Numerous bodies, including the family of the late James Henry Muirhead QC — who led the Indigenous deaths in custody Royal Commission — have called on the Prime Minister to intervene in the NT and override what they described as the "regressive actions currently being pursued by the Northern Territory Government" on justice and incarceration.
Senator Thorpe argued the "NT government is the problem, not our children".
"And yet the NT government couldn't even come to the table to be part of the solutions," she said. "They cannot keep making decisions about our children while refusing to answer for the harm being done."
The Senator called on the Commonwealth to make it clear to the Territory government "this behaviour will not be tolerated".
If they do not want to be held accountable, she said, the "Commonwealth should withhold funding until it does".
Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy has previously said the Commonwealth has financial mechanisms it can use to hold the NT accountable for its Closing the Gap failures, including in youth justice.
"We have levers that we can pull," she said in February, "and I know that through the Northern Territory Remote Aboriginal Investment...that is certainly an agreement between the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory where I have pushed for those levers to be looked at."
