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

It is a privilege to speak on the Closing the gap report that was tabled yesterday in the parliament by the Prime Minister and addressed by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. First, I acknowledge the traditional owners of this part of Australia, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people. I also acknowledge traditional owners of other Aboriginal lands right across this country, and their elders past and present. Perhaps just contemplate for a moment the struggles they have endured since white settlement, or what many would term the invasion of this country by whitefellas.

The closing the gap statement provides us all with an opportunity to reflect on these matters, and as someone who has been here for quite some time and seen governments come and go and policies change I think I am in a pretty good position, particularly given the nature of my electorate, to make some reasonable observations about our performance on closing the gap.

I have to say that whilst the Close The Gap targets themselves provide some disappointment it is also true to say that there are many good things happening. We need to applaud those good things but we need to learn from our own mistakes. When I talk about mistakes I am not talking about Aboriginal people making the wrong decisions or poor choices. I am talking about this parliament making the wrong decisions and poor choices. We have made a number of them over the years but we have an opportunity to do something different. I would say that, looking forward, we need to go back to putting at the centre of our discussions Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people themselves; understand that they need to be the ones we are talking to, not talking about, as they have demanded; and acknowledge, put in place, that we support the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, in a way to make it the voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people around this country. Sadly, that is not yet the case.

Yesterday during their contributions, both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition spoke about Closing the Gap targets in education and the importance of addressing anomalies in the education system. The Prime Minister in particular talked at one point about acknowledging as policy priorities:

… the transformative power of education, the fulfilment that comes from employment, the right of all people to be safe and free from family and domestic violence, especially women and children. While delivering on these priorities we must be innovative in creating effective solutions, in partnership with the community, to address those challenges.

I could not agree more. I would say to the Prime Minister that if he were to take as his Bible, or at least as the framework for any decision making, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan, he would see that it provides a framework for addressing the issues he has described. I was responsible for it as the minister at the time, and I acknowledge the current government for picking up the plan. It has some really fundamental elements to it. I will read the vision statement, if I may. It is very short. It says:

The Australian health system is free of racism and inequality and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have access to health services that are effective, high quality, appropriate and affordable. Together with strategies to address social inequalities and determinants of health, this provides the necessary platform to realise health equality by 2031.

These other areas—the social determinants—are of course health, education and employment, the justice targets the Leader of the Opposition has spoken about.

I want to talk particularly about the initiative from the Leader of the Opposition to support the Stars program for girls in schools, which was re-announced yesterday. Many in this place are aware of the work which is being done by the Clontarf Foundation around Australia, the very important work which they have done in schools with young boys and the meaningful outcomes they have achieved in getting kids to stay at school. But we should not be deluded into believing that if we help the boys we fix the problem, because we don't. We will only fix the problem if we help the young women of the community, because young women are going to be the next generation of mothers, those responsible for nurturing young children into a healthy life.

It is sad, but the current government, despite all the goodwill that it expresses, has failed to support the Stars program, which now operates in seven schools in the Northern Territory. Why is that important? It is important because this program was tendered by the Northern Territory government, to its credit. The Stars Foundation won the tender and now provides services in seven schools in the Northern Territory where there are Clontarf programs running. The dichotomy is that the Clontarf program is funded equally by the Northern Territory government, private enterprise and philanthropy, and the Commonwealth. Roughly one-third, one-third, one-third is the formula that is currently used. In this particular case, as a matter of genuine gender equity, this government has failed to provide one dollar to the Stars program. Why is that? Despite what the Prime Minister said in his speech yesterday, why is it that the government feels that it can be discriminatory in the way in which it funds school programs like Stars and Clontarf?

Put them together.

The Stars Foundation runs a very, very good program, currently with 420 young women in the Northern Territory—20 staff, seven schools. It is a very important program and a program which has very positive outcomes for the Northern Territory community and will continue to do so when it is rolled out in other jurisdictions. Queensland particularly is keen to have it. But they need buy-in from the Commonwealth government, the way the government has bought in historically to the Clontarf program. That means that this government and Minister Scullion in particular need to examine the decisions he has made and to ensure that this program is funded, because it must be sustainable. To be sustainable, it needs the support of the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments, as well as the philanthropic and private sectors.

It is a very popular program. I saw a figure the other day. The number of students currently participating is significantly higher than the Northern Territory government first planned for. That is because of its support within the school community. It provides an opportunity for young women to get a better and sounder education, to stay at school and be supported by really strong mentors.

The other thing I want to talk about very briefly is the announcements which we made in the health space around trachoma and eye health funding. This morning I had a discussion with a very eminent ophthalmologist who was able to inform me about why this money which was announced by the Leader of the Opposition is so important. He pointed me to the Katherine region in the Northern Territory. He says it is the worst part of Australia for chronic eye disease and he says that we are going backwards at a great rate of knots. For half a million dollars a year, he believes they could address the problem.

There are currently 2,132 people in Katherine and the Katherine region on waiting lists for eye health. That is for cataract surgery, diabetes and other diseases which cause blindness. It is very, very important that we understand the import of this to these communities, to the individuals involved, and appreciate that the announcements made by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday are targeted interventions to overcome this problem. It is just not conceivable that we should have 33 people determined to be category 1, who need eye care or eye surgery within 30 days, yet there is no capacity for them to be provided this service.

We have a responsibility in this place. We can see the importance of closing the gap. We understand the importance of targets, but collectively we have to come together and create an opportunity to get the right outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We have the capacity and the resources to do it, but we cannot do it without Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being at the centre of all decision making, being involved in every decision we make—as partners, not as subjects of the decisions. We do not want to do things to people; we want to do things with them.

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