Introducing Law The Podcast: Child Protection in the Northern Territory

**Lex Lasry** (0:02)
Welcome to Law The Podcast. I'm Lex Lasry. I'm a Victorian and Northern Territory Supreme Court judge, and recently retired from the Northern Territory Supreme Court.

**Greg Barnes** (0:10)
I'm Greg Barnes. I'm a barrister. I'm a senior counsel, and I've got a long-standing interest in law reform issues.

**Lex Lasry** (0:17)
So Greg, this is the first episode of Law The Podcast.
I suppose we ought to have a quick chat about what we expect to get out of this and what the podcast is about. It's not a podcast for lawyers. It's a podcast for everyone interested in legal issues, and we'll talk about legal issues, both Australian and international legal issues and broad legal issues, including political legal issues. So it should be an interesting journey.

**Greg Barnes** (0:41)
Yeah, I think that the point is, and I often say this to people in discussions, the law is our lives. We live the law every day, and the decision that courts make, the decisions that governments make when they pass laws, and the way the law interacts with people is really important. And we often see it in a sort of one-dimensional way. We think of law, if you ask people, what's the law, they'll often just say, a judge and a jury, something of that nature. And of course, the law is really complex.
And it does need, I think, a podcast like this to get people interested to understand, because it can be, as we know Lex, a very dry topic.

**Lex Lasry** (1:22)
Yes. Well, in this first episode, we're certainly going to be talking about the way the law affects people because we're going to be concentrating on very recent developments in the Northern Territory with Abi Rajkumar, who's the Vice President of the Criminal Lawyers Association of the Northern Territory. We'll be going into some detail with her about issues in the Northern Territory, which in my opinion, Greg, everybody in the country ought to be interested in. You're up there at the moment?

**Greg Barnes** (1:50)
I am. I know that you've been up here previously and your reputation is intact, Lex. I've fixed it for you.

**Lex Lasry** (1:58)
Yes, thanks. I've done nothing to diminish it, I hope.

**Greg Barnes** (2:01)
I've done nothing to diminish your great reputation, but I am up here for a couple of weeks. I've been working with NAJA, the Aboriginal Legal Service, a lot of young lawyers there. It's a fantastic enriching experience, but also we'll talk about it more, the territory is a hard gig.

**Lex Lasry** (2:17)
Yes, it is.

**Greg Barnes** (2:17)
The things that are happening up here are extraordinary and it should be Australia-wide news. It reminds me a bit of the deep south in the United States and the stories you hear there about the systematic racism and the way in which the place operates is really in many ways an apartheid state in terms of how the justice system and society operates.

**Lex Lasry** (2:38)
Yep.
All right, so we'll get into it. To those people who are listening for the first time, don't forget to like and subscribe. That helps us. It helps our podcast get noticed by people. And that's important to get the word out and to get the issues talked about. So we'll get underway.

**Greg Barnes** (2:59)
The Northern Territory government has decided on legislation after that tragic death of that young girl in Alice Springs earlier this year.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:10)
A man has been charged with the murder of a five-year-old girl in Alice Springs, along with two other offences. The girl, now known as Kumunjai Little Baby, disappeared from the old-timers' Aboriginal town camp, triggering a massive search.

**Greg Barnes** (3:24)
They've decided to put through the parliament, and of course there's no upper house here, so it just goes straight through, which really weakens the protections for Aboriginal kids. And without any exaggeration, you'd have to say is creating a stolen generation for the future. There have been a number of protests. I know that some of my colleagues at NARJAR have been in those protests this week, but unfortunately, the bill is now law.

**Lex Lasry** (3:52)
Well, we're very lucky in this episode to have Abi Rajkumar with us. Am I right that one of the main things that the legislation does is repeal something called the Child Placement Principle, that was I think a result of the Bringing Them Home Report.
How did that principle work and why is it so significant?

**Abi Rajkumar** (4:10)
That is right. It's the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle, which is a principle that was nationally agreed by every single jurisdiction. This legislation is a clear divergence from that principle, which is why every single state and territory apart from Queensland and the Northern Territory, their child protection ministers have written a statement affirming the importance of the principle and making it very clear that that principle needs to be central to child protection decision making and also makes it clear that it's entirely consistent with child safety. So this idea that moving away from this principle is about making children or the lives of children safer or making sure that we're keeping children safe is completely not true. It's a principle that is fundamentally was put in place to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have connections to culture and family and kin in a way that is safe. That is, if children aren't allowed to remain in their family home for whatever reason, that there is still an acute and proper avenue and mechanism for them to continue those important connections to culture, family and kin.