Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

Omit all words after "That the Senate" and insert:

(a) mourns the tragic death of 5-year-old Kumanjayi Little Baby;

(b) extends its deepest sympathies to her family, her communities in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, the Warlpiri and Gurindji families of Kalkarindji, and all Australians who grieve her loss;

(c) recognises that this child's death is not an isolated tragedy but a consequence of ongoing community dysfunction that governments have failed to address honestly or effectively;

(d) commends the volunteers, community members, police and emergency service workers who searched tirelessly for Kumanjayi Little Baby, especially the NT Police;

(e) calls on the Federal and Territory Governments to take immediate, concrete action to address the conditions including family violence, inadequate policing resources, and child protection failures that put children at risk in remote communities;

(f) demands that governments be held accountable for delivering measurable outcomes, and that community safety in remote Australia be treated with the same urgency afforded to any other Australian community;

(g) affirms that every child in this country deserves protection regardless of where they live, and that real respect for this community means action and accountability; and

(h) affirms that the safety and wellbeing of Indigenous children must always come first.

I don't want to be here right now—to have to stand in this chamber to deliver a condolence speech for a little girl in my family, Sharon Napanangka Granites. I read her name into the history books today in her honour. She was five years old. She was loved. She should still be here. I think about my late brother, Leonard, who passed away too young, before he had a chance to grow into adulthood. In our culture he would have been one of her other fathers. I find myself wondering whether things might have been different if he had lived, whether he would have been able to protect her. The only comfort I can take from these circumstances is in believing that she is now with him and so many of our family who have been taken from us too soon. The only comfort I can take is that they are with our heavenly father now.

But there is no escaping the reality of what happened. My niece's life was taken senselessly, selfishly and horrifically. The hardest truth of all is that for many in my home town none of this came as a surprise. The truth is that people do not want to speak this out loud. For too long in this country, there has been silence around what is happening in too many town camps and remote communities. It's a silence driven by fear—a fear of causing offence, a fear of being labelled racist and fear of speaking honestly about the conditions of dysfunction, violence, alcohol abuse and neglect vulnerable children are growing up in. That silence is killing our babies.

When I say our babies, our people, I mean Australians. My niece was a little Australian girl, yet there is an ideology in this country that has deliberately encouraged people to treat children like her differently because of her racial heritage. It is that same ideology that has created a hands-off culture within parts of the child-protection system—an ideology that too often places cultural sensitivities and political correctness ahead of the safety of children, the same ideology that reveres organisations, bureaucracies and so-called 'leadership structures' while vulnerable women and children continue to suffer behind closed doors. It is the same ideology that teaches people to stay silent in the face of wrongdoing, because speaking honestly might offend somebody. Well, I am no longer interested in protecting adults who feel uncomfortable about truths while children are being buried.

As more details have emerged around my niece's death, Australians have learnt that multiple warnings were reported, made in regard to her safety, and these warnings were not acted upon adequately. They should horrify every single one of us in this chamber and across this country. Let me say clearly that this is not an isolated case. For years I have raised concerns about the failures within child protection. I have spoken to foster carers who have raised loved ones, Aboriginal children, from infancy, who have seen them placed back into dangerous and dysfunctional circumstances. I have spoken to police officers, social workers, paediatricians and frontline workers who have watched children be retraumatised over and over again in a system that's supposed to protect them. Every time these concerns are raised, those who attempt to shut down the conversation say, 'Now is not the time.' They say, 'We should not politicise tragedy,' but, as my niece's aunt, I have an obligation to fight for justice in her honour. As a parliamentarian, the very reason I chose to come to this place—I have an obligation to fight for change so that fewer families endure what my family is enduring right now.

Condolences become empty when they are accompanied by excuses for inaction. Condolences become hollow when difficult conversations are avoided in the name of cultural sensitivity while vulnerable children are exposed to violence, abuse and neglect. I'm tired of the excuses. I'm tired of governments announcing billions of dollars in spending while conditions on the ground continue to deteriorate. I'm tired of hearing about symbolism, acknowledgements and gestures while children continue to grow up in unsafe environments. Housing matters, but housing alone is not going to solve this crisis. Building another house means nothing if violence, alcoholism, abuse and neglect continue unchecked inside these homes. We've got to be honest. We've got to admit this. And town camps, which many people romanticise, have become places of entrenched dysfunction; places where alcohol restrictions exist on paper but are routinely ignored; places where overcrowding, violence and criminal behaviour have become normalised; places where vulnerable women and children are too often left unprotected.

While billions continue to flow through Indigenous programs, organisations and bureaucracies, Australians are entitled to ask a simple question: where are the outcomes? Right now, the outcomes are not there. We cannot continue hiding behind race. We cannot continue pretending that lowering expectations for Aboriginal children is compassion. It is not compassion; it's neglect. It's the racism of low expectations. It's become deeply embedded in parts of our institutions. Aboriginal children are treated as though they should tolerate conditions that would never be accepted in any other child's life in this country, and this must end.

Children deserve safety before ideology. They deserve protection before symbolism. Children deserve love, stability and educational opportunity before political sensitivities—and, yes, culture matters, but no child should be sacrificed on the altar of culture or political correctness. No child should be left in danger because adults are too afraid to intervene. No child should lose their life because governments lack the courage to act.

We need, at the very least, a serious inquiry into the failures that continue to place vulnerable Indigenous children at risk. We need scrutiny of how this money is being spent. We need stronger accountability across organisations responsible for town camps and service delivery. We need child protection systems that prioritise safety above ideology, and we need leadership that's prepared to speak honestly about these realities. Most of all, we need courage—courage to stop pretending, courage to stop hiding behind slogans, courage to stop treating honesty as racism, because the cost of silence is now measured in the life of my five-year-old niece.

She was not a statistic. She was a child. She was part of my family. She was part of this nation. She deserved the same safety, dignity and opportunities every Australian child deserves, and, if her death does not confirm the need to confront the truth, then I fear we will continue failing the next little girl—and the next one, the next one and then the next one. I don't want another family to stand where mine stands today. I don't want my family to continue to stand where my family stands today. I don't want to bury another child from my own family.

I don't want this parliament to offer condolences while refusing to confront the conditions that make those condolences necessary in the first place. I want the parliament to put aside our political differences and stand up for what's right for our children. This is what we're here for. This should be the most important thing that every single one of us is here for—to put aside our differences and to put our children first. That is what we need to do, and that is all I ask.