Leanne Liddle has been shot at and seriously assaulted working as a police officer, but none of this compared to the "despair" she felt when consulting across the NT for the Aboriginal Justice Agreement.

Key points: So far $8.8 million has been budgeted for the development of the NT's first-ever Aboriginal Justice Agreement

So far $8.8 million has been budgeted for the development of the NT's first-ever Aboriginal Justice Agreement Legal advocates are concerned about how the agreement will be legislated and enforced

Legal advocates are concerned about how the agreement will be legislated and enforced The draft will be made public in a matter of weeks

"Even after 11 years in the Police Force... where I have witnessed events that nobody should ever have to see in their lifetime, some of the toughest experiences and images I saw was during the consultations," she said.

The Aboriginal Justice Unit team, with Ms Liddle as director, has been working for the past two years to establish the framework for the Agreement and conducted more than 100 consultations across the Territory.

Ms Liddle said the "despair" she felt came from seeing how Indigenous communities had not been given a say over policies that affected them.

"What we saw was heartbreaking — entire communities whose voices had been neglected or ignored for decades," she said.

"Some people told us that they had never been asked their views on the impacts of significant policy decisions by governments."

Questions over how reforms will be implemented

But a key legal group said it doubts the Northern Territory Government will be able to deliver on its part of the agreement or its commitment to reduce the Territory's high Indigenous incarceration rate.

The organisation representing criminal lawyers in the Northern Territory said it was concerned the Government was all talk and no action on justice reforms.

Marty Aust from the Criminal Legal Association of the NT said he was worried about how the Aboriginal Justice Agreement would be funded and implemented. ( ABC News: Bridget Judd )

"The ideology behind it is fantastic, but my concern is that we are going to have an aspirational document that really is incapable of being enforced or does not better those that it purports to try and assist," said Marty Aust, the president of the NT Criminal Lawyers Association.

Mr Aust said he was particularly concerned about how the agreement would be implemented, because the NT Government had recently backed away from implementing all of the recommendations of the youth justice royal commission, which was held after Four Corners exposed allegations of abuse in the territory's youth detention centres.

"How can you on one hand say we want to advance the plight of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by drafting this agreement and at the same time say we are not even prepared to put safe guards in place in youth justice legislation to give effect to recommendations of a royal commission?"

Children dance bungul at Barunga Festival, one of the communities that will be affected by the Aboriginal Justice Agreement. ( ABC News: Felicity James )

The Northern Territory has the second highest rate of Indigenous incarceration in the country; around 90 per cent of people in prison in the Top End are Indigenous.

NT Attorney-General Natasha Fyles said her government was committed to the Aboriginal Justice Agreement and had allocated $3.3 million over three years to support the development of the implementation of the plan.

"Additionally, the NT Government has invested $5.5 million over three years to trial an Alternative to Prisons model in Alice Springs and the East Arnhem region, a key deliverable of the Aboriginal Justice Agreement," she said.

The justice unit is considering a range of proposals from the consultations including housing alternatives outside prison, the establishment of local law and justice groups and increasing language interpretation services at police stations.

It's also looking to increase the number of Aboriginal Justices of the Peace in the Territory and allow for access to the births, deaths and marriages register in remote communities.

The unit has handed its draft report to the Gunner Labor Government.

Yet despite earlier stating that the Government would release the draft agreement "in the coming weeks", a spokesperson for Ms Fyles said the time frame had been changed.

"The draft agreement is currently being worked on for further consultation throughout 2019," they said.

Mr Aust said he supported many of the ideas already proposed by the unit and he hoped the Gunner Government would implement the proposals communities had suggested.

"This particular government has, in recent history and in its ongoing modus operandi, been consulting seemingly just for the purposes of saying they've engaged in a consultative process," he said.

The Northern Territory Government would not confirm if the Aboriginal Justice Agreement would be finalised before next year's Northern Territory election.