CONDOLENCE MOTION — KUMANJAYI LITTLE BABY
SENATE

Tuesday, 12 May 2026

**Check against delivery**

E&OE……………

I don’t want to be here right now. I don’t want to have to stand in this chamber and deliver a condolence speech for a little girl from my own 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 often. He passed away far too young, before he ever had the 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 protected her. Whether she might still be alive.

The only comfort I can take from these circumstances is believing that she is now with him and with so many members of our family who were 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. And the hardest truth of all is that for many in my home town, none of this came as a surprise.

That is the truth that people do not want spoken aloud.

For too long in this country, there has been silence around what is happening in too many town camps and remote communities. A silence driven by fear. Fear of causing offence. Fear of being labelled racist. Fear of speaking honestly about dysfunction, violence, alcohol abuse, neglect and the conditions vulnerable children are growing up in.

That silence is killing our babies.

And when I say ‘our babies’ and ‘our people’, I mean all 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 their racial heritage.

It is that same ideology that has created a hands-off culture within parts of our child protection system. An ideology that too often places cultural sensitivities and political correctness ahead of the safety of children.

It is 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 from uncomfortable truths while children are being buried.

As more details have emerged surrounding my niece’s death, Australians have learned that multiple warnings were reportedly made regarding her safety. These warnings were not acted upon adequately. That should horrify every single one of us in this chamber and across this country.

And let me say clearly: this is not an isolated case.

For years I have raised concerns about the failures within child protection systems in the Northern Territory. I have spoken to foster carers who have raised Aboriginal children from infancy, only to see those children removed and placed back into dangerous and dysfunctional environments because of rigid ideological adherence to kinship placement principles.

I have spoken to police officers, social workers, paediatricians and frontline workers who have watched children be re-traumatised over and over again while systems designed to protect them fail to act decisively.

And every time these concerns are raised, there are those who attempt to shut the conversation down.

They 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. And 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 remain exposed to violence, abuse and neglect.

And I am tired of the excuses.

I am tired of governments announcing billions of dollars in spending while conditions on the ground continue to deteriorate.

I am tired of hearing about symbolism, acknowledgements and gestures while children continue to grow up in unsafe environments.

Housing matters. But housing alone will not solve this crisis. Building another house means nothing if violence, alcoholism, abuse and neglect continue unchecked inside that home.

We have to be honest enough to admit that.

The town camps 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.

And while billions continue to flow through Indigenous programs, organisations and bureaucracies, Australians are entitled to ask a simple question: where are the outcomes?

Because right now, the outcomes simply 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 is neglect.

The racism of low expectations has become deeply embedded in parts of our institutions. Aboriginal children are too often treated as though they should tolerate conditions that would never be accepted for any other Australian child.

That must end.

Children deserve safety before ideology.

Children deserve protection before symbolism.

Children deserve love, stability, education and 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 lacked the courage to act.

We need a serious inquiry into the failures that continue to place vulnerable Indigenous children at risk.  We need scrutiny of how 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 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.

Sharon was not a statistic. She was a child. She was part of a 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 force this country to confront the truth, then I fear we will continue failing the next little girl, and the next, and the next.

I do not want another family to stand where mine stands today.

I do not want to bury another child from my family.

And I do not want this Parliament to offer condolences while refusing to confront the conditions that made those condolences necessary in the first place.

I want this Parliament to put aside our political differences and stand up for what is 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.

 

[Ends]