Australia lacks "eyes-on" child protection and youth justice, and is lagging behind other nations which are closing detention centres for young people, the national children's commissioner says.
A national task force to reform Australia's child justice systems and the development of a 10-year road map both needed to come into play, Anne Hollonds told the National Press Club in Canberra.
"It's a state and territory issue alone, both child protection and youth justice; we don't have these as a priority for national cabinet," she said on Wednesday.
"So there's no eyes on what's happening. There is no accountability. It's all about accountability at the end of the day."
Pointing to research by the Productivity Commission, Ms Hollonds said "even America" was doing a better job of closing down youth detention facilities.
"They are dealing with youth offending much, much earlier," she said.
"If they're needing a secure facility of some kind, that's usually a community based facility, not this big institutional prison environment."
Scotland and Ireland which have similar systems of governments to Australia, have also found a better way to deal with the issue, she said.
A task force would work where other inquiries had failed because governments would be signing up to address the issue, while a prevention and early intervention strategy was needed to help save children from "disadvantage, despair and desperation".
The commissioner also called for the federal government to appoint a cabinet minister for children.
Australia could no longer continue with "business as usual" and should ditch its failed approach of longer sentencing, more policing and more children's prisons, she said.
What she saw during visits to the nation's youth detention centres left the commissioner "shocked and distressed".
"What was most chilling for me was to meet children who had no-one, who were completely alone, who spoke of feeling shut out and shunned by society," Ms Hollonds said.
"These children were unable to tell me about any hopes or dreams or plans for the future. All they could see in their future was more of the same but in adult prison.
"The light had gone out of their eyes."
The commissioner warned unless the nation started paying attention to the evidence, the community would be having the same conversation in a decade's time, only with a lot more tragedies along the way.
The children themselves were victims of crime but because their story was rarely heard, it was easy to demonise and dehumanise them, she said.
