Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would certainly like to begin my remarks with an acknowledgement of the traditional owners of this place that we meet on, the Nambri and Ngunnawal peoples. I pay my respects to their elders past and present, and, indeed, their future leaders. I would also like to take some time to acknowledge the traditional owners of my own home town of Newcastle and the wider electorate, which encompasses Awabakal, Worimi and Wonnarua people and their country.

It is a bittersweet experience to speak today on the ninth Closing the gap report, which provides some important feedback for us all in this House on the progress—or, as the case might be, lack of progress—towards redressing what is an enormous disparity in outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians on a whole range of issues, but with a particular focus on the health inequalities. I would like to acknowledge at the outset and say thank you to the Indigenous men and women who took time to come and address us as members of parliament this morning in a ceremony in the Great Hall. They presented the Redfern Statement, which was a document crafted during the last election, to all members of parliament. It is a document that should be beyond party politics and divisions; it is something that each of us, from whatever seats we might occupy in this House, whatever parties we might belong to, can sign up to and subscribe to. The message I took home this morning from the presentation of the Redfern Statement was really just how urgent a need we have in this country to reset the relationships that we have with Indigenous Australians.

I will come back to that issue, because it is a challenging one. Indeed, it is very much a reason why I stand here, in my fourth year, speaking on the Closing the gap report in this parliament, because it gives me no pleasure to again report that we are only on track on one of the metrics in that Closing the gap report.

But it is important that we stand and confront those issues, because the Closing the gap report really reflects an issue that goes to the very core of our identity, to the significance of our identity, to our understandings of our history and, indeed, the building of our nation. So it does cause a little existential angst when we are being asked to look honestly and squarely at some of the really complex but deep and lingering impacts of a colonial history which is the founding basis of this nation.

It is uncomfortable at times—and rightly so—but it is something that we non-Indigenous Australians certainly have to face very squarely. As I said this morning, the message from the elders and senior people who contributed to the forming of the Redfern Statement is that we really need to bring some honesty to our debates in this House and the community. We need to acknowledge our failings, to redouble our efforts, to commit to breaking that cycle of failure, because it is an extraordinarily heavy burden that we ask Indigenous Australians to carry each and every year when we simply fail to live up to the targets that we have set ourselves.

There was much conversation today around the need not to be focused on the deficit side of people's experience or, indeed, the language that we use in our debates to acknowledge many of those achievements. I will come to some extraordinary achievements that are happening in communities and on the ground, but, again, I feel very strongly the need to emphasise the requirement for a really honest appraisal of the current situation and where we need to head from here.

Certainly, in terms of the targeted achievements, I think the Prime Minister this morning flagged a number of the areas where there was room for some optimism. The year-12 attainments are a target that we do appear to be on track for, and that is absolutely terrific news, but all of those other targets, many of which go towards areas around education, employment, infant mortality and life expectancy are still shocking and appalling, and none of us should rest easy whilst those inequities continue to exist in our community.

I am not going to go through each and every one of those targets—I think that there has been good coverage of those in the debates—but I would in my limited time like to take up the challenge that was presented this morning to talk about some of the successes in Indigenous communities. I really want to celebrate here in this national parliament the work of a number of programs that are happening in my community in Newcastle. I pay particular tribute to the work of Dr Kelvin Kong, a Worimi man whose life as Australia's first and, at this point, only Indigenous ear, nose and throat specialist has been dedicated to the eradication of ear diseases in Indigenous communities, which, as we heard from the member for Ballarat earlier on, is such a particular problem in so many Aboriginal communities.

I had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting him and getting to understand just a small window into the life of Kelvin Kong when he took time to talk to me about the issues confronting the Aboriginal community.

He talked about the size of the problem around otitis media, in Newcastle, our region, and the work he undertook to shrink waiting lists of hundreds of Aboriginal kids who had been trying to see him for what is a very simple surgical procedure to restore hearing capacity for kids.

He has such a deep understanding of the lived experience of those kids and a profound knowledge of the world that is opened up to children once they are able to hear, and hear correctly, and opportunities that can unfold for them. He has done extraordinary work to reduce the incidence of otitis media around Newcastle, but he travels extensively across Australia to try to deliver and share his skills and expertise with as many Indigenous communities as possible. We should absolutely celebrate people like him and his work. Indeed, as a national government we should be providing whatever resources and support we can to ensure that ear health is right there amongst the priority areas for Indigenous kids in Australia.

Deadly Choices was also mentioned as a terrific program. It is—but, regretfully, due to funding cuts, that program was not kept on in my area of Newcastle, to the deep regret of many of us. There are many areas that do not get touched on in this report that are deeply serious issues for our Indigenous communities. They go to the continued forced removal of children from kin and country, the outrageous rates of incarceration for Indigenous people and the escalating levels of family violence. These are serious issues, serious challenges. They can be uncomfortable conversations that we have to have, but we have to have honest, open conversations and partnerships with our Indigenous men and women.

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