Members of the Northern Territory's main opposition, the Country Liberal Party, have voted to establish two "school farms" if they win the next election, where troubled children would be sent to milk cows and work in a slaughterhouse.
The ABC can reveal the rank-and-file members of the party carried the motion at the last Central Council in February, at the same meeting where they also backed the 'No' campaign of an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
The motion stated: "That the CLP will set up 2x school farms in the Northern Territory to provide a secure home and education facility for children in the Northern Territory that are running the streets with no safe home life."
It proposed two facilities, one in the Katherine region and another in Central Australia.
"The school farms are a last chance opportunity," it said.
"Any significant failure to obey directions would result in the child being immediately remanded into custody to be dealt with by the criminal justice system.
"Judges would have the opportunity to send children that are under no control to attend the school farms for set amount of time."
Under the proposal, children would assist in running the farm, taking up roles such as kitchen offsiders, milking cows, feeding cows, planting vegetable gardens, picking produce to be used in the kitchen, feeding pigs, breaking in horses, cattle herd, slaughterhouse for pigs and cattle, and operating farm machinery.
They would be based in dormitories at the farm, separated into boys and girls, and monitored by school supervisors 24 hours a day.
The motion, which was carried by the rank-and-file, indicates it will be "policy for the CLP for the next election".
Under the territory's electoral laws, the next NT election is due in August next year.
When approached for comment by the ABC, Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro did not explicitly endorse taking the school farms policy to the next election.
"A CLP government will focus on getting kids to school and out of the justice system," she said.
"We will provide young people the opportunity to develop real life skills to be work-ready."
Calls for 'consistent, long-term' support to deal with issues
The proposed policy has the backing of the Country Liberal Party's most prominent voice in Canberra, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who hailed school farms as a "great initiative to help provide children a secure home and education" in a statement.
"Only a Country Liberal government will ensure that two school farm facilities will be put in place following a return to government at the next territory election," she said.
But organisations on the front line in Alice Springs, which has been in the national spotlight in recent months, say they are not convinced the proposed policy would provide an adequate environment to turn around the lives of troubled young people.
Kirsten Wilson, who is the chair of Central Australian Youth Justice (CAYJ) and a campaigner for the Justice Reform Initiative, said she held concerns the proposed policy would continue a "tough-on-crime narrative" perpetuated by successive NT governments over decades.
"We know tough-on-crime narratives lead to increases in incarceration of young people … we know that incarcerating young people does not work to decrease crime and youth crime in the community," she said.
"We've seen the impact of that across multiple decades in the community."
Ms Wilson said the CAYJ, which represents a number of legal, youth and community organisations in Central Australia, would prefer better support for services that assist children and families without needing to separate them.
"It's not one thing that we can do alone that will fix or change this situation," she said.
"It's a whole lot of different things that we need to bring in, and we need to have consistent, long-term funding for programs that we know will have an impact.
"We also need to look to the communities that are most impacted by this situation."
Doubts over school farm usefulness
Former Greens Lingiari candidate Blair MacFarland, who works for the Central Australian Youth Link-Up Service, said he did not believe the CLP's school farms idea would be sustainable.
He pointed to NT Department of Territory Families data, which showed there had been an average of between five and seven children sentenced to youth detention each week since February.
The data suggested there had been an average of 45 children on remand in youth detention every day in the last weekly reporting period.
Mr MacFarland said a farm would be an inappropriate setting particularly for children who suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome.
"It sounds like a romantic and good idea, working on a farm, but the reality is it would be enormously expensive for the five potential kids that are going to be in there, and possibly some of those five, you wouldn't safely put them in that setting anyway."
The motion to establish school farms was passed at the same meeting of the CLP's Central Council where members overwhelmingly backed the 'No' campaign for the upcoming referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Earlier this week, the CLP's president Lawson Broad resigned, citing his opposition to the party's stance towards the Voice.
It also follows the territory's Labor government legislating to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12 years old, a move opposed by the CLP but criticised by child development experts for not going far enough.
