The Northern Territory government has come under fire for what it has described as the most significant overhaul in a generation of its child protection system, months after Kumanjayi Little Baby's alleged abduction and murder.
The Every Child Matters bill, passed on Tuesday night, abolishes the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children placement principle, which ensured First Nations people removed from their homes were kept within their own culture.
"I don't know how you respond to that, except to say it makes you viscerally sick," Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care chief executive Catherine Liddle told AAP.
The changes come after Kumanjayi Little Baby's death with the NT government claiming the system was failing vulnerable children.
Kumanjayi Little Baby - as she is known for cultural reasons - was allegedly abducted from an Alice Springs town camp house and murdered in April.
However, Ms Liddle said the changes were made based on a false argument exposed by an interim report on NT's child protection system that was tabled on Tuesday - the same day the bill was passed.
The report recommended sweeping changes after it found child protection workers repeatedly failed to adequately assess safety threats to Kumanjayi Little Baby's family.
Ms Liddle said the tragedy had exposed child safety system failures and had "nothing to do" with protecting children's rights or connection to family and culture.
"This was a little baby that was loved and cared for and protected by her families," she said.
"What contributed to that death were massive system failings ... and none of those things are being responded to at this point in time.
"What we've seen is the government use this as a bit of political point scoring at the expense of Australia's most vulnerable children."
NT's Country Liberal government claimed the reforms tackled the root causes of crime, protected children, strengthened families, and would break the cycle that had led to young people falling through the cracks of the child protection system.
Opposition child protection spokesman Chansey Paech, representative of the Gwoja electorate and Eastern Arrernte and Gurindji man, said all of his 30 amendments were turned down.Â
"This is a government that would rather insult Aboriginal people than listen to them," he told AAP.
"Aboriginal children absolutely need to be in kinship arrangements so that they can be loved, supported, learn about the important stories of culture, of history, of our dreaming, and they can have the ability to have access to language."
Mr Paech accused the government of trying to create a narrative that Aboriginal people were incompetent and incapable of caring for their families.
The children placement principle emerged in recognition of the profound harms caused to the Stolen Generations and has been recognised in child welfare legislation since the early 1980s.
In the latest reforms, the introduction of a two-year time limit for families to legally get their children back has also raised concerns, with NT housing waiting lists alone being more than eight years.
"You can have a loving mother who doesn't have a house and is on a waiting list, but the lack of housing will be used as the reason not to reunify the child," North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency chief executive Ben Grimes said.
Children would likely end up in in state homes supervised by government workers, he said.
"That's almost a direct pathway into youth detention," Mr Grimes said.
"They've deliberately tried to demonise or problematise Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal families, and they're running this really horrific, untrue, false narrative."
The reforms have been backed by LNP Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price while senior federal minister Murray Watt said the commonwealth had no plans to intervene.
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