Peter Dutton says he didn’t raise specific allegations of child abuse with PM

Peter Dutton says he did not raise specific instances of alleged child abuse with Anthony Albanese but maintains that he raised broad concerns about assaults in Indigenous communities with the prime minister in private and in parliament.

Dutton's comments to Sky News on Tuesday were the latest in a back-in-forth between Labor and the Coalition, with the opposition highlighting abuse and neglect in Aboriginal communities as a reason for opposing the Indigenous voice referendum.

Dutton and Nationals senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who was named on Tuesday as the new shadow Indigenous minister, have in recent days raised disputed claims about sexual abuse of Aboriginal children, including that victims were being put back into the hands of abusers.

Last week Dutton claimed that "young Indigenous kids are being sexually assaulted on a regular basis" in Alice Springs, while Price claimed that children were being returned to abusive homes. The Northern Territory and federal governments have said Dutton would be required to report specific incidents of child abuse to police, but the opposition leader countered that he had raised the issue with Albanese in meetings last year.

When asked on ABC's 7.30 on Monday about Dutton's claims that he had raised the issue with the prime minister, Albanese said he had "no idea".

"It's possible that there may well have been a letter somewhere," he said. "I don't know what the basis of it is. But certainly he has not raised any specific issue about any claim, about any individual circumstance with me."

Asked if there was information brought to him about children being returned to their abusers, Albanese said: "No. Not that I'm aware of. That is the first I've heard of it."

On Tuesday Dutton was asked at a press conference to confirm whether he had raised abuse concerns in Alice Springs with Albanese. "Yes, I did, and I made reference to that in the parliament, so you can check the Hansard in that regard," he said.

Later on Tuesday, Dutton told Sky News that he had raised general concerns about child abuse with the prime minister, but did not highlight specific alleged incidents.

"Did I say that Billy Bloggs was abused at 7.03pm last Wednesday night?" Dutton said. "No, that's not the circumstance."

Soon after Dutton's Sky News interview, Albanese told the same network that Dutton had not cited specific cases in their conversations.

The NT police minister, Kate Worden, said last week Price's claim was incorrect, and referred to Dutton's claims as a "dog act".

Hansard records confirm Dutton did raise the issue in parliament last year.

On 27 October 2022, speaking on the national apology to victims and survivors of institutional child sexual abuse, Dutton called for a royal commission on child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities, and said he had spoken to Albanese and the Indigenous Australians minister, Linda Burney, about that issue.

Dutton raised the same concerns on 30 November, in a response to the Closing The Gap report. In a question to Albanese that day, Dutton said: "The prime minister and the minister for indigenous affairs recently met with me, and I'm very grateful for that, to discuss the unprecedented and tragic levels of sexual abuse of children in Alice Springs and elsewhere in the Northern Territory."

Albanese responded by thanking the opposition leader "for the constructive engagement that we had in my office, with the minister for indigenous affairs, about what are very serious issues".

Burney, invited by Albanese to respond further, said she had visited Alice Springs shortly after Dutton's visit, to visit family and youth services, and that "not one single person raised with me the issue of royal commissions into Aboriginal child sexual assault."

"What they did raise with me was working in partnership, with concrete actions to address this issue, which is unacceptable," she said.