Despite a week of heavy criticism for holding children as young as 10 in maximum security cells built for adults, the Queensland government has no plans to get them out.
Youth detention centres across the state are full after the government passed laws in 2016 for 17-year-olds to go through the juvenile justice system rather than the adult system.
It means some children are spending weeks in maximum security facilities, sometimes in isolation, and mixing with adult prisoners.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her ministers say they are doing more than previous governments to fix the youth justice system but can't say when the practice will stop.
She has suggested the issue could be solved with jobs, and pinned the blame on the former Newman government.
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"I re-emphasise that the best way to break the youth justice cycle is for young people to get a job. That is what it is about," she told parliament on Monday.
The Liberal National Party later pointed out children being held are as young as 10.
Queensland's Public Guardian says many of them are not serious offenders, but the premier says they are.
She says the LNP is partly to blame for the lack of alternatives because it closed a facility for children with complex mental health illnesses in 2014.
But the opposition says she is failing to take responsibility for an issue that didn't happen when they were last in government.
It wants the government to immediately secure temporary accommodation, and back its proposal to limit a child's watch house detention to 72 hours.
Medical and legal experts urged the government to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, but the premier says she will await the outcome of work being done on a national level.
Parliament will resit again the second week of June when the state budget will be unveiled.
