Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister's delivery of the Closing the gap report is a very important moment in our parliamentary year and it is certainly a time when we can reflect on the Indigenous communities in our electorate—on some of the challenges but also on many of the opportunities where we can actually work together to see many of these challenges addressed.

I commend the Prime Minister for this motion and I also thank the many members who have shared their stories in this place tonight about their own experiences oft working with Indigenous people in their electorates to help build a better future. It is heartening to see such bipartisan support, particularly in this area. It is an area that I am very passionate about and it is an area that I feel quite committed to in my local area on the Central Coast.

Last week I was honoured to have the opportunity to meet with many Indigenous leaders in my community. I was joined by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister for the occasion. We spoke with many Indigenous leaders in my electorate about some of the challenges and also some of the opportunities that have been identified in the Closing the gap report. I would like to commend the Darkinjung Aboriginal Land Council CEO, Sean Gordon. May I also commend the Indigenous Advisory Council chair, Warren Mundine, who joined us with many other leaders to spend some time helping us understand what their perspectives are on some of the important challenges for them.

We were really pleased to see that the official school attendance rates were so high—basically at the non-Indigenous rate. However, many leaders recognise that there is still a lot of work to do on employment, particularly in my electorate on the Central Coast. I was pleased that the parliamentary secretary indicated a willingness for us to work alongside our local leaders to be able to assist them in this effort.

We have a strong organisation on the Central Coast called Barang. Barang is a partnership agreement between six Aboriginal community service organisations: Bara Barang, Bungree, Darkinjung Aboriginal Land Council, The Glen, Mingaletta and NAISDA, our Aboriginal dance academy on the Central Coast. It was an absolute honour to spend time with all of these organisations because, while they identified so many of the challenges that they have experienced, they also identified many of the ways that they were supporting our young people on the Central Coast with employment and education opportunities. I believe that by working together we can achieve real and lasting results to help close the gap on disadvantage, so that all Australians have the same opportunities.

It was fantastic to have the parliamentary secretary in my electorate last week, because events such as this demonstrate that our government is here to listen—to listen to what the community has to say and to listen to where we can work better and more cooperatively together on some of these core goals. They are: getting kids to school, adults to work and helping to make the community safe. A meeting such as the one that we held last week was another step forward for Indigenous organisations, such as the NAISDA Dance College, which was actually originally funded under the former Howard government. Indigenous leaders on the Central Coast expressed to me last week the fact that they love living on the Central Coast and their desire to help us work together to establish a long-term vision of cementing what we can do together for the Central Coast.

Another pleasing facet of this visit was the opportunity to open one of the buildings at Kariong, which the parliamentary secretary attended with me. We were joined by a community of around 70 Indigenous leaders and young people from the electorate, all of whom expressed a desire to be able to work together to help us to get to these very important goals of getting more kids to school, adults to work and making our community safe.

I commend this motion to the House.

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