Looking back at the past five years since I began in the role of national children’s commissioner, I am struck by how difficult it has been throughout this time to get political attention on the unmet needs of our most vulnerable children, who continue to be “left behind”.

Far too many of these children end up in the overwhelmed child protection and justice systems because of poverty, disabilities, health and learning problems, discrimination and disadvantage.

Australia continues to fail on child safety and wellbeing because of fragmented policy and service systems across the federation.

In the post-Covid era, the unmet needs of our most vulnerable children have been sidelined in favour of adults’ concerns. To illustrate, the confronting data on the prevalence of child abuse in the Australian Child Maltreatment Study received nothing like the media and political attention given to, for example, the issue of workplace sexual harassment.

Risks to the safety of our most vulnerable children have long been regarded as state and territory responsibilities, with the commonwealth government remaining at “arm’s length”.

It has become increasingly evident that this traditional “hands off” posture by the commonwealth government, saying “It’s not our responsibility – you should be speaking with the states and territories”, is not........

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