Former NT children’s commissioner Colleen Gwynne urges urgent questions about Kumanjayi Little Baby’s death

A former Northern Territory children’s commissioner says urgent questions about Kumanjayi Little Baby’s death — including what authorities knew and whether her harm was foreseeable — must be answered now.

Colleen Gwynne, who led the NT’s children’s watchdog from 2015 to 2021, said the focus must shift immediately to whether warning signs were missed.

“In these matters where you lose a child — and children are our most vulnerable — you have to understand in practical terms what the system knew,” she said.

“You’ve got to build a single, integrated chronology — with that child at the centre and that family — and then ask: what happened in relation to that child in the years leading up to this incident?”

Kumanjayi Little Baby vanished from a town camp in Alice Springs on April 25, sparking a major search before her body was found five days later 5km away.

Jefferson Lewis, 47, has since been charged with murder and will face Darwin Local Court on Tuesday.

Ms Gwynne’s intervention comes as political pressure builds for sweeping inquiries into conditions in town camps and child abuse in the NT.

However, she said those broader debates risked missing the most immediate task.

“What needs to happen now is a full inquiry into the circumstances of this child,” she said.

“It’s not just what happened that day . . . it’s the last five years.”

She said investigators must urgently examine every interaction between the family and government agencies — including police, child protection, health and housing.

“You put it all together and say: what could we have done? Have we missed an intervention point that may have prevented the death?” she said.

“The main question here is ‘was the harm foreseeable?’”

“That’s a really hard pill to swallow for everyone but it’s a question that has to be asked.”

Ms Gwynne — a former cop who nailed Peter Falconio’s murderer during her 26-year career — said the NT Children’s Commissioner has both the power and responsibility to begin that work immediately.

“The Children’s Commissioner is the independent oversight body . . . with enormous powers to be able to understand what happened in this situation,” she said.

“We cannot wait months or years for the results of a coroner’s inquiry . . . it’s got to be quicker than that.”

While acknowledging the need to respect cultural mourning, she rejected suggestions that scrutiny must be delayed.

“There’s no reason why sorry business can’t continue while those inquiries are undertaken,” she said.

“That is completely separate.”

She said if she were still in the children’s commissioner role, she would already be on the ground in Alice Springs.

“I would have been on the front foot . . . looking at what the system knew, and how,” she said.

“People might say that’s insensitive, but it’s the reality.

“A child was taken. How does that happen?”

Ms Gwynne said any investigation must go beyond the events of a single night and examine patterns of risk over time.

“When we look beyond the individual incident . . . we’ve got to do that cumulative harm assessment,” she said.

“You’ve got to map frequency, severity and escalation . . . what was happening around that child over time.”

She said particular scrutiny should be given to vulnerability factors, including disability, noting Kumanjayi Little Baby was non-verbal.

“If you’re thinking that they are even more vulnerable . . . then there should have been heightened care for that particular child,” she said.

“The prosecution of the offender is a very small part of the work that needs to be undertaken here to understand the full circumstances and try to prevent our most vulnerable dying under such horrific circumstances.”

Ms Gwynne pointed to the 2018 rape of a two-year-old girl in Tennant Creek as a stark precedent.

At the time, Ms Gwynne was Children’s Commissioner and within weeks delivered a bombshell independent report that found the harm was foreseeable.

Her investigation revealed the family had been known to authorities for years.

There had been more than 150 police interactions, 35 domestic violence incidents and 52 child protection notifications.

Investigations into the children’s abuse and neglect had spanned 16 years.

The review identified “critical intervention points” where authorities could have acted but did not.

“We were on the ground that week . . . and we provided a comprehensive report within weeks — not months,” Ms Gwynne said.

“That’s exactly what should be happening now.”

She said it was too early to determine whether Kumanjayi Little Baby’s death could have been prevented but too important not to ask.

“It may be that this death couldn’t have been prevented but we don’t know that until we look,” she said.

“You don’t know what you don’t know, so you have to unpack every piece of it so we can save another child.”

The NT Children’s Commissioner Shahleena Musk did not respond to an interview request.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Malarndirri McCarthy did not respond to questions from The Nightly.

Ms Gwynne said that while Alice Springs was in turmoil, action could not wait.

“With death comes grief,” she said.

“But there is also a responsibility to understand whether this could have been prevented.”