'National reluctance' to discuss abuse of Indigenous children, says ex- minister

Bess Nungarrayi Price says "people don't know how to discuss" child safety in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)

Growing up in Yuendumu in the 1960s, Bess Nungarrayi Price recalls a childhood surrounded by family, connected to the bush, far from the threats of alcohol and drugs.

The former Northern Territory government minister believes that sense of safety is no longer present in many of the remote and urban Aboriginal communities of Central Australia.

"Our families were more or less mindful and together and looking after each other," Ms Nungarrayi Price told 7.30.

"But today, children are left to themselves to do whatever they want to do.

Ms Nungarrayi Price says children are sometimes left with "no adult in sight". (ABC News: Emily Jane Smith)

"I've seen that around here in Alice Springs, where young ones around seven, eight, nine … are just wandering around Alice and the town camps, and there's no adult in sight."

Ms Nungarrayi Price's observations come as the NT faces renewed scrutiny of its child protection system, which has been amplified in the wake of the alleged murder of five-year-old girl Kumanjayi Little Baby, who went missing from an Alice Springs town camp home in April.

The NT government has ordered a review into the circumstances surrounding Kumanjayi Little Baby's death, led by former New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb, after reports that the girl was the subject of child protection notifications prior to her disappearance.

The exact nature of those notifications has not been made public.

The Northern Territory is facing renewed scrutiny of its child protection system. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)

7.30 has confirmed Ms Webb has begun her investigation in Alice Springs and has three months to gather evidence and deliver her findings.

For Ms Nungarrayi Price, who is the mother of federal Coalition senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, there are questions about the short and tragic life of the five-year-old that she doesn't want to see glossed over.

She is also a relative of Kumanjayi Little Baby and believes the time is right to be talking about the territory's child protection systems and the issues that have long beleaguered it.

"If it's an Aboriginal child, there's a lot that stops us from talking openly about what we really should be doing about a case like this, to be able to understand or talk about it."

Ms Nungarrayi Price believes there's a culture of silence that stops NT communities talking openly about child neglect and sexual abuse. (ABC News: Emily Jane Smith )

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