A Northern Territory bill to legalise the abortion drug RU486 would have passed except its proposer, the former speaker Kezia Purick, “did a terrible job”, Adam Giles has said.
The chief minister was speaking on a panel organised by the Northern Territory Council of Social Service (NTCoss) ahead of the NT election on 27 August.
The panel, which included the Labor leader, Michael Gunner, and three social services executives, also covered child protection, the justice system crisis, alcohol policy, homelessness, suicide and the Safe Schools program.
The private member’s bill brought by Purick would have brought the NT into line with the rest of the country in allowing women access to RU486, but failed amid tense and emotional debate, including claims by MPs that abortion was a “fashion” which would soon end.
At the community forum on Monday night, Giles and Gunner were asked if their parties would support a new bill to amend the Medical Services Act. Both parties allow a conscience vote on the issue.
“If it’s introduced into parliament, most certainly we will vote on it,” Giles said.
Gunner said Labor would introduce a bill and support it. He said Purick had done a good job with what she had, trying to put forward the bill.
Giles disagreed and said he would have voted for the bill, but “Kezia did a terrible job”.
“If it was put to the vote it would have passed, the numbers were there,” Giles said.
He said Purick never called him to ask if he supported it. At the time it was brought forward there was some dissatisfaction across parliament at the level of communication by Purick.
Purick told Guardian Australia she had spoken to the health minister and other MPs, but had no obligation to consult any member of government or opposition in bringing forward a private member’s bill.
Monday’s forum also discussed the recent scandal of mistreatment inside juvenile detention.
Giles conceded there had been a cultural problem inside juvenile detention but much of that was due to inadequate training, which had since been increased.
Olga Havnen, chief executive of the Danila Dilba Aboriginal health service, said the Don Dale juvenile detention centre was “Dickensian”, and agreed training was an issue but “housing children in an ex-adult prison … is certainly not conducive to changing cultural practices”.
Giles said a recent review of the system by Keith Hamburger had found the previous Labor government should have built a new juvenile centre instead of the $1.7bn adult facility outside Darwin.
Giles last week reneged on a repeatedly offered commitment that he would release the Hamburger review.
“It’s inappropriate public policy to think we need to build more jails,” Havnen said.
The chief executive of Anglicare NT, David Pugh, said the federal government was involved in child protection nearly as much as the NT government, but “there is almost zero cooperation that I can see” between the two in relation to early childhood planning.
He said the NT Department of Children and Families was under-resourced and was “bunkered down in a corner” with no overarching plan, and the NT was struggling to work with its own geography.
Gunner said there had to be “generational transformational change”. He said an elected Labor government would have a minister for children, which oversaw health, education and child protection to avoid “silos”.
