Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to participate in this debate, as I have done on a number of occasions over the past years.

Can I say that I, too, am disappointed—disappointed at the contribution from the parliamentary secretary; particularly at his reference to the shadow minister actually representing a dishonest argument. It is very clear that the argument being put by the shadow minister is that you cannot cut your way to closing the gap. What is very clear as a result of decisions taken in the budget last year is that we have had $543 million taken from vital culturally-specific programs, leaving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians worse off not better off. That is the antithesis of what we have been striving for!

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot on the one hand, as the shadow minister said, come in here and say that the Prime Minister wants to be the Prime Minister for Indigenous Australians and then on the other hand take deliberate actions which undermine your capacity to close the gap—which is what they have done. They might ask: give us a real example of what we have done? Well, there was $165 million cut from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health programs. Think about it: they have cut $165 million from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health programs.

Now, I agree that this report that we are discussing tonight is not a report of the last 12 months. But, if we are to achieve the objectives that we are aiming for under the Closing the Gap targets, you cannot—over this past 12 months—cut funding to programs which are essential to improving health outcomes. It just beggars belief that you cannot see the contradiction. And the parliamentary secretary gets up here and spouts, as he did—very ineffectually I might say—that somehow the arguments being put forward by the opposition shadow spokesman were somehow not accurate!

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