Ahead of the 2025-26 Federal Budget, Jesuit Social Services has published its pre-Budget submission, highlighting opportunities for Government to target spending and policy-making, prioritising reach, strategies and programs that support children, young people and their families to live safe and healthy lives. In our first pre-Budget piece, we focus on need to appoint a Minister for Children to work towards better national leadership and accountability.
Children’s wellbeing is central to the wellbeing of our society – however systems intended to provide support and security for the most vulnerable are not delivering effective care. This is demonstrated in the significant rise in mental ill health among young people in Australia and the significant proportion of children in the justice system who have had contact with the child protection system and been exposed to family violence.
The breakdown in adequate care is often due to fragmentation of services, lack of coordination across jurisdictions, and systemic failures, particularly in child protection and youth justice. These shortcomings amount to profound breaches of Australia’s commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and they continue to attract justified international criticism.
That is why we have reiterated the National Children’s Commissioner’s call for a Minister for Children in our Federal Pre-Budget submission—an urgent step toward better national leadership and accountability. This Cabinet role, called for in the Commissioner’s 2024 report ‘Help way earlier!’ – How Australia can transform child justice to improve safety and wellbeing, would deliver the national leadership and accountability required to effectively tackle the complex challenges faced by children and young people.
Too often, children who exhibit harmful behaviours – and particularly those who have contact with the justice system – are labelled as ‘trouble’ or ‘troubled’. But beneath these behaviours, we often discover a child who experienced adult- and system-perpetrated harm early in their life, and who may be held back by locational and/or intergenerational disadvantage, limiting their opportunities and reinforcing cycles of hardship. These childhood adversities can include poverty, mental illness, involvement with child protection services, housing and food insecurity, substance misuse and sexual abuse.
Across nearly 50 years of service delivery, Jesuit Social Services has observed how these challenges intersect and compound to entrench disadvantage and perpetuate cycles of harm for young people and their communities. Our research, including our 2021 report Dropping off the Edge, highlights the intergenerational nature of these issues, underscoring the importance of evidence-informed policy-making and coordinated service delivery across sectors.
A Minister for Children would be responsible for ensuring these issues are addressed with the attention and resources they demand, to prevent children from falling through the cracks of disjointed systems.
Particular attention must be paid to the experiences of First Nations children, who are disproportionately affected by systemic failures. The Productivity Commission’s 2024 Report on Government Services reveals alarming disparities: across the country, Aboriginal children are significantly overrepresented in child protection services, out-of-home care, and youth detention. Decades of ineffective interventions by western systems have not only failed to address these disparities but have also undermined trust in government institutions among First Nations communities.
Self-determination is key to addressing these historic and ongoing failures. First Nations people should be empowered to develop and implement solutions for their own communities, and Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations should be adequately funded and supported to grow sustainably.
Jesuit Social Services welcomes the establishment of Australia’s first National Commission for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People as a crucial step forward for safeguarding the rights of First Nations children, and calls for the provision of adequate resources and infrastructure to support its critical role.
A Minister for Children in Cabinet would galvanise efforts towards delivering on our obligations to protect and promote the rights and wellbeing of all children.
Leadership at this level would signal a renewed commitment to ensuring that no child is left behind, paving way for the type of society we all want: one where every child has the opportunity to thrive.
