NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson on Friday conceded that police had known about the shocking allegations for "a significant period of time".
Despite this, and the intervention to combat child sexual abuse announced in June last year, there has been no arrests over claims of child prostitution at Nhulunbuy, 650km east of Darwin.
Non-Aboriginal people working there are believed to be exchanging cash, drugs, taxi rides and alcohol for sex with teenagers, some as young as 13.
Indigenous leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu said the sex trade had been operating for the past 15 years and at least 12 girls were currently engaged in the trade.
"Everybody here knows what has been going on and the time has come for us to put an end to this once and for all," he said.
"It has been let go for a while and it should be about time that somebody in authority comes and stamps it out."
Mr Henderson defended the NT police force.
"Police can't respond to a general allegation of just 'everybody knows'," he told reporters in Darwin.
"Police have, over a significant period of time, heard of these allegations but it's been very hard to provide specific evidence to get people before the courts."
Asked if he thought it was embarrassing that police had failed to make inroads, Mr Henderson replied: "I don't accept that".
"The onus is on people who have that information to report it to police," he said.
NT Acting Assistant Police Commissioner Colleen Gwynne said police had only recently become aware of the allegations aired nationally on Friday, but claims of a similar nature had been known for several months.
Following the latest media reports, federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin announced a child abuse taskforce was being sent to the remote Arnhem Land town.
"That will include additional police, additional family and children's services, child protection officers," she said.
Australia's most senior Aboriginal politician, NT Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour, denied the allegations reflected badly on the federal intervention.
"We are lifting the lid finally on child abuse in remote Aboriginal communities," she said.
Leon White, a former school principal at the remote Arnhem Land community of Yirrkala, said there had been "allegations (of child prostitution) for decades".
Many of the victims of the shocking racket are believed to come from Yirrkala and use sex to pay their way into town and back.
"It is good news that police are going to conduct an investigation into this," he said.
"There has been a conspiracy of silence ...
"I think the facts are that the silence has been a lot longer than just a year."
The Little Children Are Sacred report, which prompted the intervention, detailed allegations of a rampant sex trade at an unnamed town where mining workers gave Aboriginal girls - aged between 12 and 15 - alcohol, cash and other goods in exchange for sex.
It was published a year ago.
©AAP 4 April, 2008Because this is happening in the black community, the white Anglo-Masonic Law System does not and never will care.
The apparent steps that are being made are too little and too slow.
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