The Queensland child safety system needs urgent reform, according to the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership. Photo: Jeff Hendricks/Unsplash.
The Cape York Institute has told the Commission of Inquiry into Queensland’s Child Safety System that the region is at “the epicentre” of the state’s “child protection and youth justice crisis”.
In an alarming submission titled ‘’We have to get it right this time’’, the Indigenous think-tank labelled the inquiry “far more important than the Brisbane Olympics”, but expressed concerns the Games “may yet receive more focus, resourcing and effort”.
The inquiry concluded on 22 May and the commission forwarded its final report to the Federal Government — including worrying details around child safety on the peninsula.
“Our Cape York insights come from proximity — decades of observing why some families move ahead while others, of similar ability and circumstance, do not,” the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership (CYIPL) declared.
“Over more than 30 years, we have seen outcomes in remote Indigenous regions such as Cape York collapse and not only remain by far the worst there are in Australia, but in key areas — such as child protection, youth justice and incarceration — continue to worsen.”
The not-for-profit institute, part of the Cape York Partnership, told the inquiry the “vast majority” of First Nations children in these communities sat in the nation’s “bottom million”.
Child safety outcomes continued to worsen across the Cape, the institute told the inquiry. Photo: Supplied.
These are “families trapped in deep, multi-dimensional disadvantage, where child protection, youth detention and prison have become routine features of the life course rather than rare exceptions”.
“Children from these communities are more likely to be notified, removed, raised in long-term out-of-home care and to end up in detention and prison than since the 2013 Carmody Inquiry. The curve has steepened,” the submission reads.
The institute urged the commission to ask “without flinching” why previous attempts to fix Queensland’s child protection and youth justice systems “so comprehensively failed”.
Moreover, the institute pushed the commission to examine why more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were in care in 2026 than at the time of Carmody, and why over-representation had worsened.
The institute said alcohol-fuelled violence and neglect were “central drivers of harm in Cape York” and accused the state of long being “obsessed with opening the floodgates to more alcohol”.
The submission questioned: “Why has the State chosen to build a billion-dollar industry at the end of the pipeline — child protection, out-of-home care, youth detention, prison — rather than a serious prevention architecture at the front?”
“Will this Commission confront the proximate causes of increased child removal, or declare them ‘out of scope’ while the state fails to keep its most impoverished children safe?” CYIPL asked.
“Unless these questions are faced head-on, this inquiry will change nothing.”
The institute said Queensland was in the midst of “an ongoing and escalating Indigenous child protection disaster”.
CYIPL CEO Kirsty Davis said in a statement calling for change that the submission ”aims to shift the debate away from the endless cycle of inquiries and puts the focus squarely on structural reform”.
Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership CEO Kirsty Davis. Photo: CYIPL.
“When the Child Safety Commission of Inquiry concluded its final hearings, Commissioner Paul Anastassiou KC put the spotlight on the Cape York Institute’s warning that 30 years of repetitive government talk has caused a gridlock of ‘death by a thousand consultations’ — an endless cycle of bureaucracy that severely ruins vulnerable children’s lives,” she said.
“The Commissioner’s historic acknowledgment highlights a damning structural reality: ‘Queensland has become a serial inquirer while remaining a reluctant reformer’.
“For three decades, from the Forde Inquiry to the Carmody Royal Commission, the state has repeated a predictable loop of high-profile exposé followed by superficial administrative resets, routinely burying the structural lessons of past failures while the crisis at the front end continues to escalate.”
Ms Davis said “endless meetings” took place instead of “decisive action” as “children continue to experience neglect, violence, chronic truancy and developmental harm”.
She told the inquiry the Family Responsibilities Commission (FRC) was at the centre of her organisation’s “preventative architecture”, and held parents accountable.
The FRC involves a panel of respected elders and local leaders being called in when a child protection concern, chronic school absence, or police notification arises.
The inquiry included more than 1190 submissions and hearings. It was launched about a year ago when the Crisafulli Government said it had uncovered critical, long-running failures in the system.
Original Article published by Luke Mortimer on Region Tropical North Queensland.
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